Re: Individual - Collective / digest V1#1480

From: Scott Chase (ecphoric@hotmail.com)
Date: Wed 25 Feb 2004 - 05:04:49 GMT

  • Next message: Keith Henson: "Re: Individual - Collective / digest V1#1480"

    >From: Keith Henson <hkhenson@rogers.com>
    >Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
    >To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
    >Subject: Re: Individual - Collective / digest V1#1480
    >Date: Tue, 24 Feb 2004 23:09:56 -0500
    >
    >At 10:19 AM 25/02/04 +1100, you wrote:
    >>At 06:22 PM 24/02/2004 -0500, you wrote:
    >>>At 09:12 AM 25/02/04 +1100, Steven wrote:
    >>>
    >>>snip
    >>>
    >>>> but if its practitioners are unwilling to enter into dialogue with
    >>>>sociology
    >>>
    >>>Pot, kettle.
    >>>
    >>>Keith Henson
    >>
    >>My dialogue with memetics is my contribution to this site. It may not be
    >>to everyones' liking, but this is not the issue.
    >
    >I don't mind reasoned disagreement. However, what you have been doing is
    >not dialogue.
    >
    >
    My dialogue with sociology has led me to very interesting places. In her article comparing the ideas of Emile Durkheim and Carl Jung, Greenwood
    (1990) has sections comparing Durkheim's collective consciousness and Jung's collective unconscious and also D's collective representations and J's archetypes.

    Add the fact that Jung has attributed collective representations to Levy-Bruhl and we have the makings of a concept being transmitted. Putatively this transmission could flow from Durkheim to Levy-Bruhl to Jung, but I'm hesitant on this for now. Nonetheless, the concept of collective representations is shared between these authors (a homology or aspect of common ancestry of the concept). With Jung, we have the concept jumping boundaries from *sui generis* high brow sociology to depth psychology (or analytical psychology).

    Collective representations is also a slight bit convergent with the concept of "memes", as collective ideas having influence over groups of individuals and transmitted down the generations.

    I'd hazard that collective representations are closer to artifactual or socifactual memes (G-memes?) and individual representations are closer to mentifacts like engrams or mnemons (L-memes).

    If that ain't an interesting, though very tentative, dialogue with sociology relevant to memetics on several levels, I don't know what is.

    BTW, I think Douglas Brooker had asked previously about Marcel Mauss and the
    "total social fact". As mentioned in a footnote by Greenwood, Mauss was Durkheim's nephew. Sounds like another cool lead.

    OK she does refer to Ken Wilber in this article, but must we hold that against her? ;-)

    ref:

    Greenwood SF. 1990. Emile Durkheim and C.G. Jung: Structuring a Transpersonal Sociology of Religion. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion (29): 482-495

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