From: Keith Henson (hkhenson@rogers.com)
Date: Mon 07 Jul 2003 - 14:06:26 GMT
At 07:26 AM 06/07/03 -0700, Richard wrote:
snip
>Well, learning by silent example is just fine for passing on sophisticated
>techniques to educated college undergraduates anyway. It's not immediately
>apparent to me whether two decades of language use facilitated this silent
>learning or not.
(grin) might have actually gotten in the way.
>Nevertheless, there's no reason remembered images of watching people perform
>tasks couldn't be considered primordial nouns and verbs. It's a fascinating
>line of inquiry. Thanks.
Glad you like it.
As Pete pointed out on this thread, it's the way immigrant non speakers of
English learn a long list of complicated skills today.
Another example: Long ago I was taught to make a particular kind of paper
airplane, one with an actual airfoil that glides.
I have in turn taught how to make them to hundreds of kids, every one of
them by example, and if I have the chance, watching them make one and
correcting them as they go.
It would be much harder to explain how to fold paper this way verbally or
in text, in fact, I have never tried. (Diagrams would be easier. I might
have picked it up that way, just don't remember.)
None the less, kids who learn this kind of airplane folding can and do pass
it by example to other kids, demonstrating that they have been changed by
the process. I.e., there is new information in their brains because (like
the baseball example) you can test which ones of them have the meme
(information) and which ones don't.
I have never thought of memes as *requiring* verbal representations, though
of course many do.
Keith Henson
PS. This is an example where the meme can definitely be "reverse
engineered" from the product. Kids can unfold one, see exactly how it is
made and make another one.
===============================================================
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 archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Mon 07 Jul 2003 - 14:11:10 GMT