Editing Meme (section)

=== Early formulations ===
Although Richard Dawkins invented the term ''meme'' and developed meme theory, he has not claimed that the idea was entirely novel,<ref>{{cite web|last=Shalizi|first=Cosma Rohilla|title=Memes |url=http://www.cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/formerly-hyper-weird/memetics.html |access-date=8 October 2021 |website=Center for the Study of Complex Systems |publisher=[[University of Michigan]]|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120611125712/http://www.cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/formerly-hyper-weird/memetics.html |archive-date=11 June 2012 |url-status=dead}}</ref> and there have been other expressions for similar ideas in the past.<ref name="mneme">{{Cite journal |last=Laurent |first=John |url=http://cfpm.org/jom-emit/1999/vol3/laurent_j.html |title=A Note on the Origin of 'Memes'/'Mnemes' |journal=Journal of Memetics |date=1999 |volume=3 |pages=14–19 |issue=1 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210413222038/http://cfpm.org/jom-emit/1999/vol3/laurent_j.html|archive-date=13 April 2021}}</ref>

For instance, the possibility that ideas were subject to the same pressures of evolution as were biological attributes was discussed in the time of Charles Darwin. [[Thomas Henry Huxley|T. H. Huxley]] (1880) claimed that "The struggle for existence holds as much in the intellectual as in the physical world. A theory is a species of thinking, and its right to exist is coextensive with its power of resisting extinction by its rivals."<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Huxley |first=T. H. |date=1880 |title=The coming of age of 'The origin of species' |journal=Science |volume=1 |issue=2 |pages=15–20 |doi=10.1126/science.os-1.2.15 |pmid=17751948|s2cid=4061790}}</ref> [[G. K. Chesterton]] (1922) observed the similarity between intellectual systems and living organisms, noting that a certain degree of [[complexity]], rather than being a hindrance, is a necessity for continued survival.<ref>{{cite book |last=Chesterton |first=G. K. |author-link=G. K. Chesterton |date= 1990| orig-date=1922 |chapter=III. The Case for Complexity |editor-last1=Marlin |editor-first1=R. P. |editor-last2=Rabatin |editor-first2=G. J. |editor-last3=Swan |editor-first3=J. L. |editor-last4=Sobran |editor-first4=J. |editor-last5=Azar |editor-first5=P. |editor-last6=Mysak |editor-first6=J. |editor-last7=Paine |editor-first7=R. |editor-last8=Marlin |editor-first8=B. D. |title=The Collected Works of G. K. Chesterton|volume=III|url= |location=San Francisco|publisher=Ignatius Press|pages= 37–40|isbn=0-89870-310-7}}</ref>

In 1904, [[Richard Semon]] published ''Die Mneme'' (which appeared in English in 1924 as ''The Mneme''). The term ''mneme'' was also used in [[Maurice Maeterlinck]]'s ''The Life of the White Ant'' (1926), with some parallels to Dawkins's concept.<ref name="mneme" /> [[Kenneth Pike]] had, in 1954, coined the related terms [[Emic and etic|''emic'' and ''etic'']], generalizing the linguistic units of [[phoneme]], [[morpheme]], [[grapheme]], [[lexeme]], and [[tagmeme]] (as set out by [[Leonard Bloomfield]]), distinguishing insider and outside views of communicative behavior.<ref>{{cite book |first=Kenneth |last=Pike |title=Language in Relation to a Unified Theory of the Structure of Human Behavior |orig-year=1954 |edition=Revised |date=1967}}</ref>