Re: Complete thoughts

From: Wade T.Smith (wade_smith@harvard.edu)
Date: Fri Mar 17 2000 - 12:41:28 GMT

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Subject: Re: Complete thoughts
Date: Fri, 17 Mar 2000 07:41:28 -0500
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From: "Wade T.Smith" <wade_smith@harvard.edu>
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    Dan Plante made this comment not too long ago --

    >However, the most obvious hallmark is persistence of the organizational
    >information itself (a clutural analogue of genome).

    Perfectly evidenced in ants and termites.

    >The overwhelming majority of what we know [about a vanished society]
    >comes from written records.

    The overwhelming evidence that we have of early human society is burial
    plots and cave drawings and fossils.

    >At this point, WRITTEN language artifacts would seem to be at
    >least one of the order parameters by which cultures emerge and persist,
    >due to
    >their permanence and flexibility of semantic content.

    I haven't seen the Macarena written down once.

    The persistence of a dance ritual would seem to be evidence, without
    formal calligraphy of its structure, of a cultural artifact, I would
    contend, in that both constancy and meaning are found within it. I don't
    think the immediacy of art makes it just birdsong, just because there
    might only be a record in memory. The experience of that art will be
    transferred, if anything was learned.

    - Wade

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