From: Jeremy Bradley (jeremyb@nor.com.au)
Date: Wed 30 Oct 2002 - 21:00:39 GMT
At 07:15 AM 30/10/02 -0500, you wrote:
>
>On Wednesday, October 30, 2002, at 04:14 , derek gatherer wrote:
>
>> Aaron:
>> Nor do I have to deal with people insisting that only
>> external behaviors or artifacts can qualify as
>> "ideas."
>Wade:
>Interesting. Who is doing that?
>
>Is there any reason to discuss internal behaviors culturally? Inside the
>museums infinity goes up on trial.
>
>> Derek:
>> No, but I insist you can't quantify ideas. You've
>> painted yourself into a non-quantitative corner.
>
>Wade:
>I would make the same insistence. There is no how or why to such a
>quantification.
>
>> Jeremy:
>> But what about qualitative analysis of ideas Derek?
>>
>> Derek:
>> Interesting but not science.
>Wade:
>Art, literature, interpretation, even performance, even gossip, but,
>agreed, not science. So much of memetics is all of that, and not an iota
>of the other.
>
>Placing the cultural unit of transmission solely in performance would
>allow quantitative analysis. Putting it anywhere else only allows
>conjecture.
>
>- Wade
>
Jeremy:
The behaviours, or performance of art, literature, or any other cultural
artefact, are as qualitatively analysable, as the art, or literature that
supports them.
It is true that the opportunity to exactly measure 'things' in a cultural
item, or unit, is absent. However, IMO, it is not simply conjecture to say
whether an idea, trend or theme exists or not in a cultural artefact - even
if that artefact is not a performance.
PS I'm away for a week. So if I don't respond to the outrage of the 'hard
science' buffs to my humanistic polemic, it is not because I have seen the
inherent errors of postmodernity ;~)
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