Re: Durkheim redux

From: Chris Taylor (christ@ebi.ac.uk)
Date: Wed 13 Apr 2005 - 23:00:10 GMT

  • Next message: Bill Spight: "Re: Durkheim redux"

    cf. the extensive recent stuff on artefacts and ~meme (which means not the trivial dinner party 'cultural virion' conception) [re]generation, as I mentioned in parentheses previously. It's not all about backwards baseball caps y'know.

    Bill Spight wrote:
    > 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.
    >
    > ===============================================================
    > This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
    > Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
    > For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
    > see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
    >
    >

    -- 
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
      Chris Taylor (christ@ebi.ac.uk)
      HUPO PSI: GPS -- psidev.sf.net
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    ===============================================================
    This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
    Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
    For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
    see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
    


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