From: Self (a.self@eranet.pl)
Date: Mon 21 Oct 2002 - 21:34:04 GMT
Hello,
As I am a completely new kid on this block allow me to introduce myself very
briefly at first.
My name is Darek Glazewski. I am a sociologist from Poland and am currently
working on my doctoral dissertation. A few years ago I came across the term
'meme' and I instantly got interested. Of course, the first book I had read
about memetics in was Dawkins' Selfish Gene.
My master's diploma paper focused on the role language plays in social life.
But I also added an additional chapter introducing a new approach to
studying culture which, of course, was memetics. Since then I have published
a few articles in our university's annual anthology and one of the articles
was devoted to memetics. Frankly speaking, it is extremely difficult to find
a professor who can/wants to review papers in this field in Poland. But this
is not my point here. So let me get to the point.
First of all, I am going to write my dissertation in memetics. I am trying
to find someone or someone's work which aimed at carrying out a linguistic
or should I say sociolinguistic research (e.g. of slang, idiomatic
expressions, slogans etc) from the perspective of the memetic theory.
Therefore, I would be really obliged if you could help get in touch with a
person who has already tried to do it.
Then, I am also interested in getting in touch with somebody who has tried
to analyze memes as forms of energy. Information can be (according to 2nd
law of thermodynamics) expressed as energy. Should memes be considered ways
of transferring information and/or conveying messages, I claim they should
be presentable as forms of energy. Energy which is capable of influencing
largely human mind and counsciousness and, in a way, as many forms of
energy, it should be capable of shaping/reorganising matter.
I strongly believe that analysing memes as portions of energy and finding a
way of combining memetics with Shannon's information theory as well as 2nd
law of thermodynamics (growing entropy) would take memetics into a more
scientific than philosophical direction.
I will be glad if anyone could help me. I am sorry if my message doesn't
comply with some internal netiquette of this discussion group. I should
blame it on my being an absolute novice here. I will reaaly appreciate any
feedback and guidance. I am strongly convinced that memtics has a real
potential as a descriptive and explanatory tool but I simply think that it
has to follow a straight path created by contemporary methodology (much as I
am aware that this methodology may simply be of memetic nature or, as Kuhn
put it, it may be a paradigm waiting for a revolution :-)) )
Best regards,
Darek Glazewski
----- Original Message -----
From: "Van oost Kenneth" <kennethvanoost@belgacom.net>
To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
Sent: Monday, October 21, 2002 9:32 PM
Subject: Re: electric meme bombs
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Bill Spight" <bspight@pacbell.net>
>
>
>
>
>
> > Considering that anthropologists have not yet come up with a standard
> > definition of culture, don't hold your breath. ;-)
> >
> > OTOH, I think that the differences about the definition of memes are
> > more philosophical than scientific. I think that most memes pass the
> > Stewart test. We may not be able to define them, but we know them when
> > we see them. Memes can be identified in the same way by people holding
> > different definitions. For instance, the phrase, "Give me a break!"
> > identifies a meme. Some people may define that meme as the behavioral
> > expression of the phrase, others may define it as a neural structure in
> > the brain, others may use other definitions, but they can all still
> > agree that the phrase identifies a meme, and can informally say that
> > "Give me a break!" is a meme.
> >
> > This kind of agreement exists not just at the level of identifiers, but
> > at the level of phenomena. Memetics can ignore neither the external nor
> > the internal aspects of a meme, regardless of how it is defined. When
> > you get down to brass tacks, a thorough scientific study of, say, "Give
> > me a break!" will cover the same phenomena, regardless of how it is
> > defined.
> >
> > What I would like to see is less talk about definitions and more talk
> > about memes. :-)
>
> Can 't agree more ! That is the spirit !
>
> Kenneth
>
>
> ===============================================================
> 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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