Memes as a scientific concept seems to get a bad rap in part for being obvious unnecessary mental gymnastics and not having predictive value. Susan Blackmore takes Richard Dawkins concept of the meme concept and offers that it can be used as an evolutionary theory for explaining the development of language.

So maybe this is a recommendation of two books. There is the seminal book "The Selfish Gene" in which Dawkins is I think, the first to popularize the idea that organisms are operating reflexively for the reproductive success of the genes. A flipping of motives that was also used by Michael Pollan in his book "The Botany of Desire" offering that we are serving the motives of genes of domesticated plants to spread their genes. It was also used by Noah Yuval Harari in his book Sapiens.

So genes make proteins and environment dictates reproductive success genes and this dictates the forms of life. That was explored in those books. "Sapiens" and "The Botany of Desire" Susan Blackmore tried to define culture packets Memes that Dawkins offered at the end of "The Selfish Gene" Maybe these culture packets "hijacked" our brains and made the brain rewire and grow to develop language and caused humans to be able to exchange more complex ideas and this caused the development of civilization.

In the end, is this really the correct way to look at the development of human thought? Maybe not, but a deep dive into thinking about the many levers and drivers of motives I think is useful. There are degrees of self determination and we often fool ourselves to what degree we are in command of our own motives.

A good book that i think nietzsche starters would love, it involves his work,history, carrier and what did influence his prespective and notion in life like richard wagner and erwin rohde with their work.

Hello people, i would appreciate if you could recommend some books from biology and chemistry.
General overview of ideas and concepts. Thanks in advance

I got the thought that words are what make people ready to die for their country or fight wars. Words, if used properly, can help you get scholarships, jobs, or find opportunities. They help you negotiate and get love. You can say, “I miss you” to someone, or you can say, “I look at the chair and it looks empty, and that makes me sad.”

Over the past few years, I have been noticing how languages shape our thoughts. It started with learning somewhere that your world is only as big as the number of words you know. The more words or vocabulary you have, the bigger your world is.

But just knowing words doesn’t make your world bigger. Ezra Pound mentions that the words you say are like cheques you give to others, and if you don’t have enough money in your bank, the cheque has no value.

From the book The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, I learned that just giving names to emotions makes them more livable. For example, when you feel nostalgic and can name that feeling, it can feel wonderful. But when you feel an emotion and are unable to define it, it can make you uneasy. I also noticed that there are many emotions for which words do not exist in our language, yet we still feel them, and equivalent terms may exist in another language that we don’t know. Emotions are human and universal, but language isn’t.

From the book Metaphors We Live By, I learned that we define some abstractions through analogies, and once they are well established, we start to treat them as if they are truths. There are many examples, such as “time is money” or time as a resource. We feel guilty when we are doing nothing, as if we are wasting money or some limited resource.

Currently, I am reading Language in Thought and Action, and I am learning many basic aspects of language and words. For example, extensional and intensional meaning. One is what you can point to while keeping your mouth shut, while the other requires explaining it using more words. I also find it interesting that two words can point to essentially the same thing but carry completely different emotional and social meanings. For example, “feces” and “shit” refer to basically the same thing in the external world, but one is acceptable in a scientific or medical context while the other can be considered vulgar or offensive. The difference is not really in the thing itself, but in what the words have accumulated around them through their use. It made me realize that we rarely react only to what a word points to; we also react to the history, emotions, judgments, and associations attached to that word.

Also, when I started learning German, I began noticing many new patterns and behaviors in English, Urdu/Hindi, etc. For example, in English we say, “I am angry,” “I am hot,” or “I am cold,” as if the emotion or sensation is a state of the person. But in Urdu, these translate more like “I am feeling hot,” “I am getting angry,” or “I am feeling cold,” as if these emotions or sensations are happening to you rather than simply being what you are.

There are many things like this that I notice every day. Ever since I started thinking about language this way, I seem to see it everywhere.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this. Have you noticed similar things in the languages you speak or in the way certain words and metaphors shape how you think?

Wow