RE: transmission

From: Scott Chase (ecphoric@hotmail.com)
Date: Sat 17 May 2003 - 00:59:51 GMT

  • Next message: Keith Henson: "RE: transmission"

    >From: Philip Jonkers <philosophimur@dygo.com>
    >Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
    >To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
    >Subject: RE: transmission
    >Date: Fri, 16 May 2003 04:07:29 -0700 (PDT)
    >
    >Richard:
    > >It's another interesting aspect of memetics that most of the discussion
    >on
    > >this list comes from people saying things that go counter to the general
    > >understanding of the field. Posts that concur with the mainstream
    >generally
    > >pass without comment.
    >
    >Indeed, controversy provokes! Agreement in general does not encourage
    >replies (other than to give complementary comments or additions to that
    >which is being agreed upon).
    >
    >
    My controversy provoking posts where I likened evolutionary psychology to phrenology due to some shared commonalities (eg- modularity) received a reply by Dace. Keith has, AFAICT, been silent on this as his phrenological bugbear has been compared to his EP raison d'etre.

    EP probably has much more going for it now than phrenology did then, but some of the basic assumptions seem quite similar, as I've posted upon before.

    Too bad Gall and Spurzheim didn't have the wonderful modern neuroimaging techniques at their disposal at the time they were theorizing. Here I'm countering Keith's Whiggish attitude towards phrenology with a little bit of anachronism.

    Phrenology is to psychology as Lamarckism is to biology. They are both whipping boys in these modern fields so that first year students will have someone to disparage. Closer inspection may reveal that people like Gall and Lamarck actually made more than an erroneous contribution to history of science.

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