Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id OAA01045 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Tue, 30 May 2000 14:47:54 +0100 Message-ID: <39337FCA.9094B8C2@mediaone.net> Date: Tue, 30 May 2000 09:46:02 +0100 From: chuck <cpalson@mediaone.net> X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.72 [en] (WinNT; I) X-Accept-Language: en To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Subject: Re: Cui bono, Chuck? References: <20000530091307.45648.qmail@hotmail.com> 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
Diana Stevenson wrote:
> Chuck wrote:
>
> <No wonder he praises Blackmore, a person who claims that fax machines and
> computer operating systems answer no needs -- (in other words, they are
> "useless").>
>
> As I understand it, all Blackmore means here is that we survived perfectly
> well without them. If you look at the data available, you'll find that
> people around the world who don't have fax machines and computers produce
> far more children - and at a younger age which means greater biological
> fitness - than those who do.
Diane - whether or not you are correct that Blackmore means it in that way, her
point is wrong any way you look at it. It is certainly true that people in
other types of societies don't need fax machines, but they are not from
advanced industrial societies where the communication of complex and copious
economic and technical information is part of the lifeblood of the society.
That is the reality of industrial society, and it explains perfectly easily why
the fax spread so quickly. She on the other hand finds its spread totally
mystifying - or at least says she does and assumes instead that it must be due
to mere desire for imitation much akin to the reason why people imitate
fashion.
As for the biological fitness of those people who don't have faxes and have
more children, that is a short run situation that is already disappearing. The
vast bulk of these very same people are at this moment being forced off the
land by mechanized agriculture where they go to live in the cities -- where
they have birth rates that are rapidly falling because urban birth rates
**always** fall to below replacement rates.
Your assumption, however, that Blackmore actually thought this through, however
erroneously, is in my opinion wishful thinking. The sheer amount of purely
mystical thought camoflauged with psuedo scientific concepts borrowed form
genetics makes me suspect that she was not the slightest bit interested in
carefully thought out explanations.
> Evolutionary biologists (and psychologists) are likely to seek explanations
> for such developments in ways that historians and anthropologists are not.
> The meme model is one explanation for why culture might work against
> biological reproduction. I don't think anyone's claiming it's a complete
> theory of culture.
>
I am aware of the ways these different sorts of explanations differ. Most
historians, however, cannot be compared to the others you mention because they
are committed to the narrative form of explanation and are extremely resistant
to using scientific concepts to explain history. They see themselves as the
mythmakers of our time and are extremely reluctant to change that role;
remember that they are officially classified as part of the humanities.
As for the rest of the social sciences, large portions of them are in sorry
shape because of the politicization of their fields. The main reason they don't
get anywhere much these days is their insistence that the hard sciences are
largely ideology and no more objective than the social sciences. It is a barely
disguised attempt to divert some of the funding going into the sciences into
their own coffers, and it has an enormously distorting effect on their
research. In fact, their resistance to using scientific method and theory in
their research has been the principle cause for why they have made no progress
in discovering the principles of human behavior over the last two generations.
Some of them, however, are beginning to use sociobiology as the umbrella field
for all the social sciences and are having impressive results. That is the
direction most of them will eventually go, although it will take some time.
>
> Diana
> ------
>
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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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