RE: Is Memetics a Science?

From: joedees@bellsouth.net
Date: Tue 09 Sep 2003 - 03:01:01 GMT

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    From: "Brad Jensen" <brad.jensen@eufrates.com> To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk> Subject: RE: Is Memetics a Science? Date sent: Mon, 8 Sep 2003 21:48:23 -0500 Send reply to: memetics@mmu.ac.uk

    > are rarely strictly
    > > scientific in the
    > > same sense that, say, physics and chemistry may claim to be.
    >
    > Scientific disciplines are followed with religious fervor.
    >
    > Read the recent Wall Street Journal article on Cold Fusion.
    >
    > Brad Jensen
    >
            Yes, but they are generally discredited by peer review, motivated by the fame and fortune that can result for the curtain-puller when such pseudoscientific falsehoods are exposed, although when certain dogmatic stances gain the ascendancy in a field, sometimes violent cognitive seismic dislodging shocks are necessary in order to shake adherents free from their adopted doctrines (see Sokal's TRANSGRESSING THE BOUNDARIES: A HERMENEUTICS OF QUANTUM GRAVITY for a very effective way to do this in the so-called
    'soft' sciences - namely, humor, parody, satire and ridicule). And ohboy did the fervent acolytes scream when their pseudocognitive balloon was punctured!
            Actually, criticizing cold fusion these days is so routine and easy that it's like shooting fish in a barrel (or creationists in a barrel of monkeys).
    >
    > ===============================================================
    > 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 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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