Richard Dawkins. The Selfish Gene. New York: Oxford University
Press, 1976.
-. The Extended Phenotype. New York: Oxford University Press,
1982.
Elan Moritz, of the Institute for Memetic Research, provides the
historic and methodological background to the subject in
Introduction to Memetic Science., a Webtext.
E.O. Wilson. Sociobiology: The New Synthesis. Cambridge:
Belknap/Harvard University Press, 1975.
Mediation: a powerful philosophic notion reflecting interest in
the many ways in which something different from what we want to
know, understand, do, or act upon intercedes between the object
of our interest, action, or thought.
G.W. Hegel. Hegels Werke, vollständige Ausgabe durch einen Verein
von Freunden des Verewigten, vols. I-XIX. Berlin. 1832-1845,
1887
The dialectics of mediation includes a non-mediated mode,
generated by the suppression of mediation, leading to the
Thing-in-itself: "Dieses Sein ist daher eine Sache, die an und
für sich ist die Objektivität" (vol. V, p. 171) (This being is,
henceforth, a thing in itself and for itself, it is objectivity.)
Everything else is mediated.
In all post-Hegelian developments-right wing (Hinrichs, Goeschel,
Gabler), left-wing (Ruge, Feuerback, Strauss), center (Bauer,
Köstlin, Erdmann)-mediation is a major concept.
Emile Durkheim. De la Division du Travail Sociale. 9th ed. Paris:
Presses Univérsitaires de France, 1973. (Translated as The
Division of Labor in Society by W.D. Halls. New York: Free Press,
1984).
Michel Freyssenet. La Division Capitaliste du Travail. Paris:
Savelli, 1977.
Elliot A. Krause. Division of Labor, A Political Perspective.
Westport CT: Greenwood Press, 1982.
Gunnar Tornqvist, Editor. Division of Labour, Specialization, and
Technical Change: Global, Regional, and Workplace Level. Malmo,
Sweden: Liber, 1986.
Marcella Corsi. Division of Labour, Technical Change, and
Economic Growth. Aldershot, Hants, U.K.: Avebury/Brookfield VT:
Gower Publishing Co., 1991.
Leonard Bloomfield. Language. 1933. rpt. New York: Holt, Rinehart
& Winston. 1964.
In this work, the author maintains that the division of labor,
and with it the whole working of human society, is due to
language.
Charles Sanders Peirce. "Anything that determines something else
(its interpretant) to refer to an object to which itself refers
(its object) in the same way, the interpretant becoming in turn a
sign, and so on ad infinitum" (2.303). "Something which stands
to somebody in some respect or capacity" (2.228).
Other sign definitions have been given: "In the language,
reciprocal presuppositions are established between the
expression (signifier) and the expressed (signified). The sign is
the manifestation of these presuppositions," (A. J. Greimas and
J. Courtés, Semiotics and Language. An Analytical Dictionary,
Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983, p. 296; translation
of Sémiotique. Dictionnaire Raisonné de la Théorie du Langage,
Paris: Classique Hachette, 1979).
According to L. Hjelmslev, the sign is the result of semiosis
taking place at the time of the language act. Benveniste
considers that the sign is representative of another thing, which
it evokes as a substitute.
Herbert Marcuse. The One-Dimensional Man. Studies in the Ideology
of Advanced Industrial Society. Boston: Beacon Press, 1964.
Plato. Phaedrus, and The Seventh and Eighth Letters (translated
from the Greek), with an introduction by Walter Hamilton.
Harmondsworth: Penguin Press, 1973.
Regarding cave paintings, see:
Mihai Nadin. Understanding prehistoric images in the
post-historic age: a cognitive project, in Semiotica, 100:2-4,
1994. Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter. pp. 387-405 B.
Campbell. Humankind Emerging. Toronto: Little, Brown & Co.,1985.
W. Davis. The origins of image making, in Current Anthropology,
27 (1986). pp. 193-215.
Luigi Bottin. Contributi della Tradizione Greco-Latina e
Arabo-Latina al Testo della Rhetorica di Aristotele. Padova:
Antenore, 1977.
Marc Fumaroli. L'Age de l'Éloquence: Rhétorique et 'Res
Literaria' de la Renaissance au Seuil de l'Époque Classique.
Geneva: Droz and Paris: Champion, 1980.
William M.A. Grimaldi. Aristotle, Rhetoric: A Commentary. New
York: Fordham University Press, 1980- 1988.
Rhetoric is generally seen as the ability to persuade. Using many
kinds of signs (language, images, sounds, gestures, etc.),
rhetoric is connected to the pragmatic context. In ancient
Greece and Rome, as well as in China and India, rhetoric was
considered an art and practiced for its own sake. Some consider
rhetoric as one of the sources of semiotics (together with logic,
hermeneutics, and the philosophy of language (cf. Tzvetan
Todorov, Théorie du Symbole, Paris: Ed. du Seuil, 1977). Gestures
are a part of rhetoric. Quintillian, in De institutione
oratoria, dealt with the lex gestus (law of gesture). In the
Renaissance, the code of gesture was studied in detail. In our
days of illiterate rhetoric based on stereotypes and
increasingly compressed messages, gestures gain a special status
indicative of the power of non-literacy-based ceremonies. The
rhetoric of advertisement pervades human interaction.
George Boole (1815-1864) conceived of a logical calculus, in An
Investigation of the Laws of Thought on which are founded the
Mathematical Theories of Logic and Probabilities (London, 1854),
which eventually became the basis for digital computation.
Howard Rheingold.Virtual Reality. New York: Summit Books, 1991.
Rheingold offers a description that can substitute for a
definition: "Imagine a wraparound television with programs,
including three-dimensional sound, and solid objects that you can
pick up and manipulate, even feel with your fingers and hands.
Imagine immersing yourself in an artificial world and actively
exploring it, rather than peering at it from a fixed perspective
through a flat screen in a movie theater, on a television set,
or on a computer display. Imagine that you are the creator as
well as the consumer of your artificial experience, with the
power to use a gesture or a word to remold the world you see and
hear and feel" (p. 16).
In an Internet interview with Rheingold, Sherry Turkel points out
that computers and networks are objects- to-think-with for a
networked era. She predicts, "I believe that against all odds and
against most current expectations, we are going to see a rebirth
of psychoanalytic thinking" (cf. Brainstorms,
http://www.well.com, 1996).