From: Keith Henson (hkhenson@rogers.com)
Date: Tue 08 Jul 2003 - 14:10:25 GMT
At 10:27 AM 08/07/03 +0100, you wrote:
>Very interesting, although it strikes me that there's a difference between
>skills that can be conveyed as easily non-verbally as verbally (or indeed
>even better non-verbally). Whilst making a flint axe can be learnt through
>demonstration, copying and practice, it seems that things like the laws,
>religion, history etc of a social group cannot be easily transmitted without
>language.
When people devised methods to store information, they used two approaches,
non-verbal and verbal or pictures and sounds. Chinese and Egyptian
hieroglyphs are the outcome of the picture approach. Writing systems
descended from Cuneiform went to sounds. Both methods worked.
When you get to transmitting "laws, religion, history etc." I think "stored
information" in some form is more of a factor. Really primitive tribes
don't really have laws, religion is a local matter subject to change, and
history goes back not much further than the oldest witness.
Your main point is, of course, correct, but I can imagine an alien race
without language where all meme transmission was by pictures or
demonstration. An entire world of mimes! (Shudder)
>I wouldn't dispute the notion of stone tools as memes (as regular
>list members will know from my position on memes, effectively, as
>artefacts),
As list members know I consider the *information itself* to be the meme,
independent of the media. And indeed memes *may be* encoded in an artifact
so they are easy to read out.
A piece of paper folded into an airplane is more "information rich" than a
never folded sheet. It can be "read out" by a person unfolding and
learning the folding steps. A brain that has just learned to make this
paper airplane either by watching one made or "reverse engineering" a
sample airplane is that much more information rich. The same information
would exist in a series of drawings or a text description of how to fold up
this particular paper airplane. The only common element (besides paper) in
a variety of ways leading to a paper airplane flying about is the
information on how to make one.
Information, of course, must be encoded in matter. In the paper airplane
example it is in an object (a sample), on paper (drawings, text) or in
brains. There is no particular reason not to class drawings, text and
brains as "artifacts" I suppose so in that sense memes would always be
encoded in "artifacts." But the only common element for the paper airplane
across these "artifacts" is the information on how to fold one.
>or their social significance, but do we define a culture by its
>artefacts or tools, or by the communicative meaning that those artefacts
>convey to members of that culture?
>I guess it's a bit of both. We talk historically of ages of stone, bronze,
>iron, agriculture, industry etc. which are rooted in the technology of the
>time, but once historical records appear we add in all sorts of cultural
>tropes, like myths, religions, rituals, etc. etc.
Good points.
Keith Henson
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