Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id UAA16204 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Sun, 26 Mar 2000 20:48:25 +0100 Date: Sun, 26 Mar 2000 14:47:05 -0500 From: Robert Logan <logan@physics.utoronto.ca> To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Subject: Re: Lost comments In-Reply-To: <4.1.20000325150042.00cb2540@mail.rdc1.bc.wave.home.com> Message-ID: <Pine.SGI.4.10.10003261332340.7557876-100000@helios.physics.utoronto.ca> Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
A double thanks to Dan Plante - one for his original critique and two for
his retrieving it for me. With all this fanfare I feel I have to come up
withsomething good - so here goes:
On Sat, 25 Mar 2000, Dan Plante wrote:
> At 05:27 PM 25/03/00 -0500 Robert Logan wrote:
> >Hi List members - someone sent me very thoughtful critique of my paper on
> >March 15 or 16 and as I was trying to respond to it I some how clumsily
> >lost it.
>
> I think you might mean this one:
>
> 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.
Thank you for being so generous
>
> I would like to say "well done", but at the same time, I should qualify my
> kudos
There is always a kicker :-)
>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:
NOT AT ALL (I WILL USE CAPS SO IT IS EASIER TO PICK OUT MY COMMENTS - I AM
NOT SHOUTING)
>
> 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)?
THIS IS A HARD ONE TO ANSWER - I GUESS I COULD SAY THERE IS LEAKAGE
BETWEEN THE VARIOUS FIELDS OF INTEREST THAT I PURSUE AND I SEE ANALOGIES
BETWEEN PHENOMENA IN DIFFERENT FIELDS. DOUG HOFSTATDTER HAS BEEN WRITING
AND TALKING ABOUT THIS IDEA WHICH MAKES A LOT OF SENSE. MY THINKING IS
BASICALLY METAPHORICAL [METAPHOREIN IS GREEK FOR "CARRY ACROSS"] I GUESS I
AM IN THE MOVING BUSINESSS AND LIKE TO MOVE IDEAS FROM ONE FIELD TO
ANOTHER. THE SPECIFIC WORK THAT GOT ME GOING WAS MY WORK WITH COMPUTERS IN
EDUCATION IN WHICH BOTH THE COMMUNICATION AND INFORMATICS ASPECT OF
COMPUTING BECOME SO EVIDENT. THEN WHEN I READ MICHAEL STUBBS WHO
DISTINGUISHED WRITTEN AND SPOKEN LANGUAGE AS TWO SEPARATE LANGUGAE I MADE
THE LEAP THAT ALL FORMS OF LANGUAGE HAVE BOTH A COMMUNICATIONS AND AN
INFORMATICS DIMENSION. I MADE a similar LEAP WHEN I READ ABOUT MEMETICS
AND REALIZED IT HELPED ME TO UNDERSTND THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE BETTER.
> 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?
MY MODEL IS QUALITATIVE. BUT YOUR QUESTION EGGS ME ON. IS THERE A
DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE NUMBER CONCEPTS OF SPOKEN LANGUAGE AND THE LANGUAGE
OF MATHEMATICS THAT NUMERICAL NOTATION MADE POSSIBLE. I CLAIM THERE IS A
BIG DIFFERENCE. THE CONCEPT OF ZERO AROse FROM THE USE OF THE ABACUS AND
THE FACT THAT THE INDIANS USED THEIR ALPHABET TO NOTATE NUMBERS A=1, B=2,
C=3, ETC WHEN THEY WANTED TO WRITE OUT 3 HUNDREDS AND 2 THEY WROTE IT AS
C SUNYA(WHICH MEANS LEAVE A SPACE IN SANSKRIT) B OR C=3 HUNDREDS NO TENS
AND B=2 UNIT. THEY NOTATED SUNYA WITH A DOT AND THEN A CIRCLE. SUNYA WAS
TRANSLATED INTO ARABIC AS ZIFRA AND CAME TO THE ITALIANS AS CIPHER AND
ZERO. THE POINT OF THE STORY I THAT A WRITTEN NOTATION IS REQUIRED TO
DEVELOP THE CONCEPT OF ZERO AND HENCE WRITING AND MATH ARE DIFFERENT
LANGUAGES THAN SPEECH BECAUSE THEY TEACH US TO THINK DIFFREENTLY. OTHER
THN THIS I CAN NOT PRESENT ANY MATHEMATICAL DATA. BUT SINCE WE ARE TALKING
ABOUT THE QUALITATIVE DIFFREENCES OF LANGUAGES THERE IS NO NEED FOR MATH.
> 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 - I must confess I am too new to mimetics to be able to help you with
these ideas. What you say makes sense but I do not feel I have enough
knowledge of mimes to answer your question properly re conceptual mimes.
But not all memes are
conceptual some are preceptual like clothing fashion.
Best wishes - Bob Logan
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