Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id GAA17114 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Thu, 16 Mar 2000 06:08:44 GMT Message-Id: <4.1.20000315194711.009f6310@mail.rdc1.bc.wave.home.com> X-Sender: dplante@mail.rdc1.bc.wave.home.com X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 4.1 Date: Wed, 15 Mar 2000 22:08:47 -0800 To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk From: Dan Plante <dplante@home.com> Subject: Re: Monkeys stone herdsman in Kenya In-Reply-To: <Pine.SGI.4.10.10003010519250.6222784-100000@helios.physics .utoronto.ca> References: <38B70970.900534A2@fcol.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
At 05:24 AM 01/03/00 -0500 Robert Logan wrote:
>Many thanks for your attention if you have read this far in my first
>posting. I hope to hear from those whose interest I might have piqued.
>I am rather new at the meme game but believe I have something to share
>vis-a-vis language, communications and chaos/complexity theory.
>
>Hoping to hear from some of you.
Hi, Robert. Sorry for the delay in responding, but I don't have as much time to
devote to things like this list as I'd like (being the wage-slave Dilbert that
I am :-), and I wanted to study your paper before I responded. Well, I've
finished it, and I have to say I can find nothing wrong with the general
reasoning behind your proposition regarding the specific nature of the
emergence of conceptual thought in the lineage of Homo Sapiens. As a matter of
fact, I find it to be quite insightful.
I would like to say "well done", but at the same time, I should qualify my
kudos by pointing out that I am not in your field (although electronics
engineering does have some interesting overlaps with your field regarding
feedback and control systems theory, synergetics, chaos and complexity theory,
etc.) Just a couple of quick questions, if you don't mind:
1) What is it that led you to this conclusion (ie: which connections of
which observations or seemingly unrelated knowledge made the idea "click" or
"gel" in your mind)?
2) To support your theory, have you done any work along the lines of a
formalized mathematical model to identify and characterize the order
parameters, control variables and general nature of the stable attractors at
the bifurcation of percepts --> concept/word?
The reason I'm asking is that I have come to the conclusion that the "meme" we
talk about can only be one thing: a "sentence" - or, as my grade 3 teacher kept
telling me over and over again: "No, no, Daniel, "Bob and Betty went" is a
phrase, not a sentence. A sentence is a COMPLETE THOUGHT." (No, she didn't yell
at me, the emphasis is mine :-).
Actually, to be more precise, I should say that a "complete thought" (which IS
the same thing as a sentence in the English language, at least) would HAVE to
be the most fundamental element of the field we call "Memetics", if indeed we
desire Memetics to be a field which claims some explanatory authority in the
area between minds and culture. Whether we call a "complete thought" a meme, or
whether we choose to call some other higher construct a "meme" matters little.
Also, the "complete thought" MUST be a WRITTEN one (think: Legal Code or Rules
of Parlaimentary Procedure). If it's never written down it's social, not
cultural, and a merely social construct has too many limitations to give rise
to a persistent cultural entity: memory space and abstraction (ie. "thinking")
space are too small, mutability is too large, persistence in one form - ie: one
person's lifetime - is too short to provide the persistent memory store akin to
"genes", etc.
Anyway, the emergence dynamics that lead from sensations of qualia, then to
percepts, and then to concepts and finally to "complete thoughts" is key to
determining whether this view can be supported. If you've developed, or know
of, any formalized models in this area, I'd like to know about it. The rest of
the path from complete thoughts, to stories, to society, to culture, to
technology are, I think, much easier to formalize within this framework.
Dan
>
>Bob Logan
>****************************************************************************
>* Robert K. Logan - Assoc. Prof. of Physics - University of Toronto *
>* 60 St. George Street - Toronto, Ontario, M5S 1A7 - Canada *
>* e-mail: logan@physics.utoronto.ca *
>* phone: (416)978-8632 or 652-2570 or 927-9200 fax: (416)927-7077 *
>* Author of: The Fifth Language: Learning a Living in the Computer Age *
>* and The Alphabet Effect *
>****************************************************************************
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