From: Van oost Kenneth (kennethvanoost@belgacom.net)
Date: Mon 16 Feb 2004 - 09:05:16 GMT
Steven wrote,
Those who call themselves memeticists are a very, very diverse bunch who are offering utterly incompatible definitions of a meme and incompatible explanations of social life. All that holds them together is the word meme. This all adds up, in scientific terms, to a 'hill of beans'. Until there is the beginnings of an agreed upon program, designed to solve agreed upon disputes about what memes are and how they express themselves as social life, or constitute social life, memetics cannot be taken seriously as a science.
<< Yes, in a sense this true ! The major difficulty I got with what is called
memetics is its " taking- for- granted- attitude "_ like everthing is said and
done, like the gene- analogy can explain everything !
Existentalism, individualism and the notion that we being social beings
is a Western mantra. For being human we need the Other to exist, and
theorems like formulated by Dawkins in The Selfish Gene do automatically acknowledge this insight_ that evolution has profided us with mechanism
which do indulge us with social discourses etc, but that is holding the
lease for the truth, finally we know who and what we are !
That ain 't true ! Although many claim to know the truth and most of us
have their own ' truth' about things ( relativism) [ and that is a truth in its
own account] criticism is required !
Criticism wouldn 't be necessary if scientific inquiry spontaneously
appeared to us, like it was inscribed in the objects around us.
The whole grounding for this discussion is the notion that some, like
you Steven, stand critical for what is said and done in the field of
memetics, your criticism that nothing has been done challenges some
their belief that there is a truth and that ' memetics ' is part of it.
If noone has the truth, than your criticism is part of that assumption.
This is a deadlock !
We need criticism !
We need the challenges !
On that point I agree !
Regards,
Kenneth
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