Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id IAA15648 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Wed, 21 Jun 2000 08:23:42 +0100 Message-ID: <20000621072204.5588.qmail@nwcst285.netaddress.usa.net> Date: 21 Jun 00 08:22:04 BST From: Derek Gatherer <derek-gatherer@usa.net> To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Subject: Re: Cons and Facades X-Mailer: USANET web-mailer (34PS1.1.04) Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Pardon me for entering this thread so late, but I'm just catching up on
several months' worth of posts.
I'm not trying to start an argument, but it seems that this thread is again
attempting to revive an old misconception:
a) that memetics is in some way ignored or unfunded by the mainstream
scientific community, and
b) that it's all my fault (or the fault of Richard Brodie, Paul Marsden, Sue
Blackmore etc, or anyone else being obliquely slurred by the 'Cons and
Facades' notion.)
Memetics has been consistently funded since the early 1970s. Marc Feldman has
been pulling large grants at Stanford since at least 1973, from the National
Science Foundation and other sources. Boyd and Richardson received the JI
Staley Prize in 1978, a major recognition for the field. More recently,
memetics and memetics-related work has been funded at MIT, Cambridge and
several other places (dear old Manchester Met. among them). Kevin Laland
holds a Royal Society Research Senior Fellowship in Cambridge. That's 10
years of guaranteed funding, with tenure (or rather the slightly less secure
British equivalent) normally following. Of course, pulling a grant is never
easy in any field, but to suggest that memetics is somehow being
cold-shouldered by the establishment is simply not true. Anybody who
maintains it is, is either spectacularly uninformed about what is going on in
academia, or is just making it up for the purpose of some other agenda.
Memetics does have some high profile opponents in academia. Steven Pinker at
McGill is the name that most obviously springs to mind. William Harms at
Tufts, Anthony O'Hear in Oxford and Adam Kuper at Brunel have also sent
smaller torpedoes across our bows. But these guys have scientific objections
(right or wrong). Their opposition is nothing to do with imagined 'Cons or
Facades'.
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