Re: Fwd: Did language drive society or vice versa?

From: Bill Spight (bspight@pacbell.net)
Date: Fri May 12 2000 - 21:49:14 BST

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Date: Fri, 12 May 2000 13:49:14 -0700
From: Bill Spight <bspight@pacbell.net>
Subject: Re: Fwd: Did language drive society or vice versa?
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    This got bounced back. Trying again. :-)

    Dear Vincent,

    > I don't want to posit this as a serious contribution to this
    discussion, but
    > you've given us a brilliant example of a meme we all know-
    the chicken and
    > the egg conundrum. Does anyone have any clever answers to
    that? (or rather
    > why does it persist?).
    >
    > Mine answer to the question itself would be that eggs came
    first, because
    > eggs appeared before chickens evolved.

    Plainly (?) true for genetics. The egg carries the germ line.
    The
    chicken is phenotype.

    > Why it persists? Well I don't know-
    > another useless meme?

    Whenever you have interdependent systems (i. e., virtually all
    biological systems), the question arises, because it seems that
    you have to say that some of the interdependent aspects are
    primary and the others are derived. Given only the present
    system, that is not an easy question.

    Even in genetics, the fact that the egg came first is a partial
    (fuzzy) truth. The parents and mates of the mutation have to be
    similar enough (in social and sexual species) for the mutation
    to
    survive and reproduce.

    Best,

    Bill

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