Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Memetic Evolution'

The thesis here presented establishes a triple parallelism between biology and psychology. First, through Haeckel's recapitulation theory as the source of freudian and jungian psychology. Second, from the reductionist view of science to the new phenomenology of evolutionary developmental biology. Third, by overcoming the reductionist paradigm in biology through the Extended Synthesis and in psychology though the revisited archetype theory. By establishing these parallelisms, the thesis faces the nature vs. nurture debate on three epistemological levels, in which the external and internal levels are being mediatied by a middle one. This turns the dualistic debate into a heuristic paradigm aimed to resolve any irreducible dualism inherent in the reductionist view

Memetics is a Darwinian approach to evolution of culture proposed in late 1970s. This thesis proposes an approach to Memetics, which is an effort to overcome some of the problems involved. It is argued in this thesis that units of cultural evolution are functional abstraction of physical reality and are realized within the boundaries of our cognitive processes. The boundaries of human cognitive processes are defined by Clark and Chalmers (1998) in their extended cognition hypothesis according to which, human cognition is understood as a part of the cultural environment. Therefore human cognition and cultural environment can best be understood by studying them together. As for identifying these units, an extended functionalist approach has been proposed and an empirical cultural transmission study has been conducted and explored in the thesis.

Orientador: Paulo Morelato França
Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Faculdade de Engenharia Eletrica e de Computação
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Resumo: Dentre a gama de técnicas heurísticas e exatas existentes para a resolução de problemas combinatórios, os algoritmos populacionais genéticos e meméticos têm se destacado devido a sua boa performance. Em especial, os algoritmos meméticos podem ser considerados atualmente como uma das técnicas melhores sucedidas para a resolução de vários problemas combinatórios, dentre eles, o problema do caixeiro viajante. Nesta dissertação será apresentado um algoritmo memético aplicado ao problema do caixeiro viajante assimétrico, com a proposta de uma nova busca local: Recursive Arc Insertion. Os resultados computacionais considerando as 27 instâncias assimétricas da TSPLIB são apresentados, analisados e comparados com resultados obtidos por outros métodos propostos para o problema. O mesmo algoritmo é também aplicado a 32 outras instâncias assimétricas e a 30 instâncias reduzidas do problema de ciclos hamiltonianos não direcionados. Um framework para algoritmos evolutivos é apresentado, já incluindo o algoritmo memético implementado e a redução de instâncias do problema de ciclos hamiltonianos não direcionados para o problema do caixeiro viajante simétrico. Além disso, dois geradores portáveis de instâncias com solução ótima conhecida são descritos: um para o problema do caixeiro viajante assimétrico e outro para o problema de ciclos hamiltonianos
Abstract: Among the range of heuristic and exact techniques for solving combinatorial problems, the genetic and memetic populational algorithms play an important role due to their good performance. In special, the memetic algorithms can be considered current1y as one of the best techniques to solve several combinatorial problems, especially, the traveling salesman problem. In this dissertation a memetic algorithm applied to the asymmetric traveling salesman problem is developed, and a new local search is proposed: Recursive Are Insertion. The computational results considering the 27 asymmetric instances from TSPLIB are presented, analyzed and compared with results attained by other methods recent1y published. The same algorithm is also applied to 32 other asymmetric instances and to 30 reduced instances from undirect hamiltonian cycle problem. A framework for evolutionary algorithms is also presented, including the memetic algorithm implemented and the codes which performs a reduction from the undirect hamiltonian cycle problem to the symmetric traveling salesman problem. Besides, two portable instances generators with a known optimal solution are described: one for asymmetric traveling salesman problem and other for hamiltonian cycle problem
Mestrado
Automação
Mestre em Engenharia Elétrica

This research project is an analysis of the use of digital propaganda by the three major parties in the UK 2010 General Election. In addition to this empirical aim, the study also employs the discipline of memetics to generate a theoretical and methodological approach with which to study digital propaganda. Memetics is an evolutionary theory of culture based around the concept of the ‘meme’ or cultural replicator. This study contends that propaganda can be understood as an evolutionary phenomenon, with the ethical implications of its use specifically addressed in each instance, rather than assumed as part of its definition. The memetic ‘methodological toolkit’ which is used to analyse the data on the 2010 election is a means by which key concepts from within the literature on memetics can be practically deployed. As part of the study this ‘toolkit’ is presented and the testing of it is continually evaluated in order to improve upon the initial design, something which also has implications for the use of memetic concepts within thematic textual analysis. The election itself was not an ‘Internet election’ in the way that the 2008 Presidential Election in the USA might be characterised. Such an election can be identified by a convergence of factors from within the party campaign structures and the wider political environment on a specific subject or individual – commonly a candidate for office – resulting in a high degree of spontaneous online participation and organisation amongst citizen supporters. This study argues that the UK 2010 election did not produce such a convergence due to low levels of voter enthusiasm, uneven social and financial resources and an inability by the major parties to capitalise on the potential opportunities for digital campaigning which arose.

A dissertação pretende permitir ao leitor simular a forma de pensar de Daniel Dennett, e perpassa toda sua filosofia, com ênfase em seu tratamento de o que são padrões, o algoritmo evolutivo, intuition pumps, consciência, e seu uso dos conceitos de illata, abstracta, semântica e sintaxe para compreender a natureza, a biologia e a mente humana. O trabalho reapresenta, sob nova luz, grande parte das ideias mais importantes de Dennett, e procura fazer a engenharia reversa de o que o levou a pensar de determinadas maneiras, guiando o leitor através de caminhos similares, procurando fomentar um aprendizado ativo de uma forma de pensar, acima e além de uma exposição dos resultados obtidos ao longo de décadas desse pensamento no próprio Dennett
This dissertation intends to provide the reader with an inner simulation of Daniel Dennetts form of reasoning, spreading over his whole philosophy, emphasizing his treatment of patterns, the evolutionary algorithm, consciousness, and his use of illata, abstracta, semantic, and synthax, to carve nature at its joints, especially biology and the human mind. It recasts, in a new light, great part of his most important ideas, and reverse engineers what made him think in particular ways, walking the reader through similar pathways, fostering an active learning of a thinking style, above and beyond a mere exposition of the results obtained by this thinking style over the years

碩士
國立雲林科技大學
資訊工程研究所
99
In this paper, a hierarchical memetic algorithm (MA) is proposed for the path planning of swarm robots. The proposed algorithm consists of a global path planner (GPP) and a local motion planner (LMP). The GPP plans a trajectory within the voronoi diagram (VD) of the free space. A memetic algorithm with a non-random initial population plans a series of configurations along the path given by the former stage. The MA locally adjusts the robot positions to search for better fitness along the gradient direction of the distance between swarm robots and IGs. Once the optimal configuration is obtained, the better chromosomes will be reserved as the initial population for the next generation. Since the proposed MA is with non-random initial population and potential based local searching, it is more efficient and the planned path is faster than the traditional GA. Simulation result show that the proposed algorithm works well, specifically in terms of path smoothness and computation efficiency.

碩士
樹德科技大學
資訊工程學系
95
In this thesis, an heirarchical algorithm is proposed for path planning of manipulators. The proposed algorithm consists of a global planner and a local planner. The cell-decomposition approach is adopted as the former to plan a trajectory for robot end-effector. The Memetic algorithm with local search is adopted to plan the local motion of the manipulator. The local search procedure reduces the search space and speedups the evolution significantly. In this thesis, the local research is implemented by a potential minimization algorithm. The algorithm locally adjusts the robot configuration to search for minimum potential configurations using the repulsive force between manipulator and obstacles. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm works well, in terms of collision avoidance and computation efficiency.

碩士
國立政治大學
公共行政學系
104
The mismatch between theory and method is a crisis which the discipline of public administration cannot afford to ignore. The arrival of the “Era of Big Data”, only serves to make matters worse. As data becomes uncoupled with the individual, so goes any pretense of trying to provide analyses beyond that of mere description. If public administration refuses to import new ontology and epistemology, then very little could be gained from online text research. The Darwinian theory of evolution, ever since the Modern Synthesis, has embraced the replicator centered point of view when explaining all living phenomena. This has unshackled the theory from limitations of the traditional individual centered view of evolution. Memetics is a recent offshoot of the theory of evolution. It views social cultural change as a process based on the evolution of a cultural unit of selection, the meme. Due to memetics’ ability to explain social cultural evolution from the meme’s point of view, it is a natural candidate to examine the dynamics of “big” online text data. The first part of this research is on the construction of an online text analysis framework, with testable hypotheses, through the integration of past literature on evolution, social cultural evolution, memetics and ecology. The second part is concerned with the testing of the framework with empirical data. The text corpus used in this research contains 1,761 news reports from the Yahoo! News website on the issue of high school curriculum change. Chinese term segmentation and text clustering algorithms were applied to the corpus, in order to extract text quasi-species composed of similar memes. Statistical tests were then used to determine the influence of text characteristics and temporal distribution dynamics on the population of quasi-species. Findings indicate that the population dynamics of text quasi-species were influenced by density dependence. Text characteristics, such as word length and sentiment, also exert significant influence on the number of comments that each text receives. However, these influences are not equal under different density conditions. The location of the news articles within the website also creates a difference in the number of comments received. Finally, interactions between the temporal distribution of different quasi-species and between quasi-species and term groups also yielded significant positive and negative correlations. The results are proof that memetics is an ideal theoretical platform to connect theory with text mining/analysis methods. It allows for a theory based approach and the creation of testable hypotheses. Frameworks and methods based on evolution and ecological research are also applicable under memetics. The empirical findings point to the importance of monitoring the temporal distribution of online text, and the significance of text characteristics and website environments to text population changes. The results also illustrate the importance of term groups in the influence of text population dynamics. Together these variables and effects are all central to the understanding of the change in online text and comment numbers, and the effect of past text population on current population changes. Online texts from different websites should also be analyzed separately. This research recommends that future public administration big data analyses should continue to adopt the memetic approach. Nevertheless, attention should be given to the strengths and weaknesses of different text mining algorithms and density dependence tests. Big data time series from different websites and with longer temporal spans should also be considered, while social cultural artifacts other than texts should not be excluded from memetics based researches. New frameworks must also be constructed to integrate and understand, the interaction between important variables, such as, text characteristics and environmental influences. Findings on all forms of online data would also be enhanced through comparisons with results from questionnaires designed with memetics in mind.

1 ABSTRACT This work consists of two parts. The first one, "Lost Ideas of Middle Age" has a character of an auxiliary study and does not hold any particular scientific ambitions. It serves as a reservoir for monitored case out of history of science in its widest meaning. Good deal of attention is dedicated to so called blind alleys of science, too (therefore "Lost Ideas"), as they are considered an important source. This wide scope was necessary due to the task of the second part of the work, i.e. tracking and identification of evolutionary processes of ideas/"memes" in medieval natural philosophy. Even those ideas, that do not directly share on "pedigree" of thesis claimed by modern science, were subject to evolution and in effect, even their death or degeneration should be of an interest. Another reason for chosen wide scope was a question of proper context. Medieval philosophers were interested in general questions and any particular problematic they were interested in was related to the "big picture". Medieval universe felt a bit like a living organism where every single part played its specific role in supporting harmony of the whole - in contrast to modern science which disintegrates into number of ever more specialised branches with increasing tendency to lose ability to communicate among themselves....

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Florida State University, 2004.
Advisor: Dr. S.E. Gontarski, Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Program in the Humanities. Title and description from dissertation home page (viewed June 16, 2004). Includes bibliographical references.

Selon la théorie de la double hérédité, les processus de transmission sociale des connaissances permettraient aux cultures humaines d'évoluer de manière darwinienne. On parvient à cette conclusion en inférant que, étant donné qu'une analogie profonde peut être établie entre les mécanismes de transmission génétique et ceux de transmission sociale, on devrait non seulement concevoir que les processus cognitifs d'apprentissage social constituent bel et bien un système d'hérédité distinct du système d'hérédité génétique, mais qu’il est aussi légitime, sur la base de cette même analogie, de transférer les concepts explicatifs et outils formels issus de la biologie évolutionnaire et de les adapter à l'étude des cultures humaines en vue de constituer une théorie darwinienne de l'évolution culturelle. Cette analogie de l’hérédité culturelle fait depuis longtemps l'objet de controverses tant au sein de la littérature scientifique que dans les discussions philosophiques. On ne semble pas s'entendre sur la nature même de cette analogie ni non plus sur la force de justification épistémique qu'une telle analogie donnerait à la mise en place d'une théorie darwinienne de l'évolution culturelle. Néanmoins, à travers plus de quarante années de débats, la structure de cette analogie n'a jamais été examinée en détail et on a rarement examiné l'épistémologie des inférences par analogie dans un tel contexte. L'objectif principal de la présente thèse consistera à offrir une première analyse systématique de la nature, de la structure, de la fonction et de la justification épistémique de l'analogie de l'hérédité culturelle, fondement conceptuel de la théorie de la double hérédité. En portant ici une attention particulière à la structure logique de cette analogie, on pourra constater l'ampleur de sa complexité, complexité passant souvent inaperçue dans les critiques de la théorie de la double hérédité. On défendra ici la thèse selon laquelle l'analogie de l'hérédité culturelle est en fait composée de deux analogies constitutives qui, conjointement, ouvrent la voie à la mise en place et à l’organisation d’un programme de recherche visant à mettre au point une théorie darwinienne de l’évolution culturelle.
According to the dual-inheritance theory, processes of social transmission of ideas should allow human cultures to evolve in a Darwinian fashion. This conclusion is obtained by an explanatory inference according to which a profound analogy can be established between the cognitive processes of social learning and those of genetic transmission mechanisms. Not only should we understand social learning as a genuine cultural inheritance system, distinct although complementary to the genetic inheritance system, but, on the basis of the very same analogy, it would also be legitimate to transfer and adapt the theoretical concepts, explanatory formats and formal tools of evolutionary biology to the study of cultural dynamics so as to constitute a Darwinian theory of cultural evolution. The cultural inheritance analogy has been controversial since it was first suggested. A lack of consensus amongst scientists and philosophers about the proper meaning and epistemic reach of such an analogy has impeded the acceptance that human cultures might evolve. Nonetheless, through the forty years of controversy, the structure of the cultural inheritance analogy has never been systematically scrutinized and its relevance as an epistemic foundation for theory construction seldom examined. The main objective of this dissertation is to offer a first systematic analysis of the nature, structure, function and epistemic reach of the cultural inheritance analogy as the conceptual foundation of the dual-inheritance theory. By insisting on its logical structure, it is argued here that it is a complex analogy, the complexity of which is often misunderstood by the criticisms levelled against the dual-inheritance theory. It is argued here that the cultural inheritance analogy is in fact composed of two constitutive analogies that conjointly justify and organize a Darwinian research program of cultural evolution.