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Memes are ideas, behaviors, or styles that spread from person to person within a culture. In a way they signify the evolution of culture. Genes transmit biological information, whereas memes transmit ideas, and information about belief. The meme is a unit for carrying out cultural ideas which can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals or other phenomena. Memes are the cultural analogues to genes because the self-replicate, mutate and respond to selective pressures.
 
Memes can be selected for over many years through religion and ritual:

             How do we educate children in order for them to be prepared to take their place in society (including higher education) in the 21st Century? Given that we can’t anticipate what the economy will look like at the end of next week, it is difficult to predict what the society they will enter will even be like. Without that knowledge, how do we educate children so they have a cultural identity; what understanding of the world do they really need?

This semester I’ve been grappling with what evolution means to me, how we define it collectively and how I define it personally. Having reached the end of our journey in this class, I’ve settled on an understanding of evolution as change. Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary offers many definitions of the word, one of which describes it as “a process of change in a certain direction” (Merriam-webster.com), not specifying which direction represents evolution. A progression of ideas can portray evolution, and an evolving classroom can be depicted by its changes in classroom dynamics. With this idea in mind, I became interested in the evolution of the classroom and the evolution of classroom dynamics that affect levels of participation.

   The issue of free will is something I often struggle with. Partly because I do not feel as though I have enough background knowledge and understanding of concepts directly applicable to it, and partly because, as philosophers and scientists have been arguing about it for nearly two millennia, it is simply an unsolvable problem. This essay is a small venture to help further my own understanding about free will. I will begin by attempting to trace my current understandings of free will, the issues and problems that I have with it, and the general questions that I still posses about it.

Final Project: Comparison


      I noticed partway through this course that the concept of storytelling has actually been use in a number of the courses I have taken so for, though it has been presented in different ways and for different purposes.  I have had the experience of three separate professors in three different disciplines give me a very similar assignment.  I found that, when I looked at these pieces in conjunction with this course that they seemed much more connected than I thought they were, I was able to trace some of my own academic development through them, and the styles I used to present them clearly showed how each class biased my presentation.

Marni Klein

BIOL/ENGL 223

7 May 2011

A Political Science Major’s Understanding of Science

In class we talked about how to teach evolution, and I think the best way is to do it early. I was inspired by a previous student’s work, which Anne shared with us on Serendip, to write a children’s book. Anne challenged me to correct the book, because I had been somewhat insistent in class on conveying the story of evolution as accurately as possible. Trying to tell this story in a child friendly way was a harder task than I imagined. I do not see this book as a correction. I love the message of connectedness in Britt’s book. But I wanted to tell a different story. My story starts earlier and is an attempt at being both scientifically accurate and child-friendly.

Before reading this poem I want to explain my thinking behind it. My thesis was about lesbian jokes, so I have been thinking about the use of the turkey baster quite alot. This poem and accompanying etchings display the intractions of gender, information, science, and technology. Though lesbians don't actually use turkey basters to inseminate their partners, the idea of repurposement is essential. People have taken a kitchen tool and made it to be a stand in for a penis. The poem discusses how a person can make quick judgments about gender based on physcial attributes. It also looks at how a simple piece of plastic has been made into a powerful, life giving tool of science.

 Jenny Cai

Evolit

Paul Grobestein

May 7, 2011

The 20th Century Plague

For my final paper, I collaborated with themword to create a dialogue in which we explored our understanding of the social and natural sciences. As a natural science major, I first a wrote about my opinions and current understanding of the social sciences which is included below. themword wrote to the same prompt only she substituted natural for social. We then exchanged papers and videotaped the conversation on social and natural sciences that followed. Please check out themword's 4th webpaper and visit the link to our video to learn more about the discoveries we made in the course of this final web "event."