From: Scott Chase (osteopilus@yahoo.com)
Date: Fri 01 Apr 2005 - 23:41:22 GMT
--- Kate Distin <memes@distin.co.uk> wrote:
> This didn't get through last time - trying again.
>
> Kate
>
> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: Durkheim
> Date: Sat, 26 Mar 2005 11:36:51 +0000
> From: Kate Distin <memes@distin.co.uk>
> To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
>
>
>
> Section on Durkheim as promised.
>
> Kate
>
> Durkheim: social facts as memes?
>
(snip Kate's thoughts on Durkheim for brevity)
>
Kate, thanks for posting this section on Durkheim. I'm
glad to see the responses too. I'll need to digest it
and try to brush on on Durkheim himself a little.
I've been reading Boyd and Richerson's _Not by Genes
Alone_ (2005. University of Chicago Press, Chicago)
and they take a middle ground between sociology and ev
psych that isn't based upon memetics. They prefer the
term "cultural variant" to "meme". They're not in the
camp of the universal Darwinists or of Sperber. I do
like this particular aside (Boyd and Richerson, p.
82): "For any phenotypic performance there is a
potentially infinite number of rules that could
generate that performance." That pretty much punctures
the simplistic memes in the noggin approach (though
Boyd and Richerson place cultural variants in the head
too a certain degree). Not too long ago I asked Keith
to picture a scene where Chris Taylor (another list
participant) and I were at a table drinking iced tea
from mason jars (my apologies to Chris for putting him
in this scene). Our overt behavior would appear to be
the same, but what's going on inside could diverge
quite a bit.
Several pages back (page 74) Boyd and Richerson say:
"[Culture] has no analog of recessive or silent genes
that do not influence phenotype...but are transmitted
anyway." I think this intersects with our previous
discussion about your book where I wasn't too keen on
the term "recessive" for memes. Yet OTOH, I wonder how
this disanalogy between cultural variants and genes
affects the possibility of neutral memetic alleles.
Boyd and Richerson do address the possibility of
cultural drift (eg- Table 3.1 on page 69) in small
populations which is a plus IMO.
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