The overview of the technosphere's development through the evolutionary theory of Charles Darwin
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.21847/1728-9343.2014.5(131).29618Keywords:
evolutionary theory, meme, gene, idea, creative design, meme-poolAbstract
This article is devoted to overview the role of the human mind in the formation of the technosphere through the evolutionary theory of Charles Darwin. This paper compares Charles Darwin's evolutionary theory with the process of cultural formation, the biological world with the world of ideas. The author tries to show this identity by identifying mechanisms involved in the development of technological artifacts. Special attention is paid to the conception of the formation so-called "memes" - units of cultural information.
In this article we tried to show that the idea of creative design can be replaced by an alternative theory of evolutionary development. As a result of certain inferences the author came to the following conclusions: first of all, the background of evolutionary theory are not exclusive to the biological world, and therefore it can be applied to other areas of reality.Memes (in other words ideas) developed by analogy with the genes. Thechnology device, such as a wrist watch is a collection of memes, which evolved throughout the history of mankind.
People's mind is full of memes, which are competing for resources. The most effective memes are those that have the ability of self - reproduction. Thus, in the case of a wristwatch, we can assume that design thinking was correlated with memes that were specific to earlier versions of watcht mechanism. Some of those memes, were very well represented, and in the result was included in the design wristwatch modern example. Memes that were not so effective (for example, the idea of attaching hours in the jacket with chains) were not included in the new design and now almost extinct. Transmission of memes for thousands of years has led to the invention of modern wristwatches. It was only a matter of time before they are all concentrated in one mind of the inventor, and finally a modern version of a wristwatch was born.
If the assumptions that we have made are right, and if evolutionary theory also will pass the test of time, it is quite possible that the idea of creative human creativity in the history of technology can be replaced by the concept mimetic evolution.References
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