From: Bill Spight (bspight@pacbell.net)
Date: Wed 13 Apr 2005 - 21:27:36 GMT
Dear Scott,
> This is just wrong, surely? The example you give is, if anything,
> evidence that the child has taken past experience (~meme) of
> purposively dropping things (this is equivalent to an artefact
> causing the reconstitution of a meme as recently discussed), almost
> uniformly while standing still, and reused that ~meme in a new
> context without decomposing it _at all_.
>
Does '~meme' mean 'non-meme'? ;-)
Where is the culture in this? Where is the transmission? The so-called
meme, "Things fall straight down," is not part of modern scientific
culture. People don't transmit these ideas to children, nor do they
mischievously set things up so that children get these wrong ideas.
Children have minds of their own, and do not wait for the culture to
teach them everything. If they had to, we would not be such a successful
species.
Best,
Bill
P. S. For a time when I was three years old I thought that calves gave
chocolate milk. Nobody suggested that idea to me. You can see the
analogical thinking. To be sure, the idea of chocolate milk is cultural.
But not the idea that calves give milk. Nor the overall analogy.
Now, some people may believe that analogical thinking is cultural. I
strongly doubt it.
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