Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id KAA06878 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Fri, 28 Apr 2000 10:15:39 +0100 Message-ID: <39088B74.4B847372@mediaone.net> Date: Thu, 27 Apr 2000 19:48:20 +0100 From: Chuck Palson <cpalson@mediaone.net> X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.72 [en] (WinNT; I) X-Accept-Language: en To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Subject: Re: [book review- the social life of information] References: <LNBBJFJFCJFOIJDOGJMAAELMEMAA.havelock@tig.com.au> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Of the two that Havelock has sent, I think this is by far the best. It
is, however, by any usual definition of memetic, not a memetic approach
except insofar as memologists want to consider all behavior memetic.
The first URL, by the way, says that the memetic approach differs only a
little from the approach of Saul Alinsky; he would walk away either
laughing or mumbling to himself if he were alive.
Perhaps I don't know what the memetic approach is after reading
Blackmore's latest book and lots of postings, but it looks to me like
what is moving it is the academic passion for studying disembodied
things. It reminds me a lot of the fascination academics have had about
deconstruction and textual criticism. But it's great for those who are
always looking for the magic bullet in applying a few hard science
analogies to human behavior.
Understanding human behavior can be done scientifically, but not by
borrowing a few concepts from the hard sciences and simplistically
applying them to behavior. Also, one instantaneously looses one's ability
to make useful discoveries when the immediate motivation seems to be to
attack certain behaviors as morally undesirable; this seems to pervade
memetics.
havelock wrote:
> another book excerpt that might be of interest...
>
> http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue5_4/index.html
>
> ===============================================================
> This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
> Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
> For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
> see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
===============================================================
This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
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