Re: reading a book

From: Chris Taylor (christ@ebi.ac.uk)
Date: Mon 25 Apr 2005 - 23:25:31 GMT

  • Next message: Bill Spight: "Re: reading a book"

    But what is imagination? Is it so wonderful? I think if we tried to pin it down we might find ourselves somewhere fairly mundane..?

    Bill Spight wrote:
    > Dear Kate,
    >
    >> When I stress the importance of humans' ability to free information
    >> from its original context, I don't mean that memes should be "context
    >> free" in the sense of "independent of *any* context". As you say,
    >> it's from context that information often derives much of its meaning
    >> - and certainly it's context that gives us clues about appropriate
    >> behaviour based on that meaning.
    >>
    >> What I see as significant is our ability to move information between
    >> contexts - to choose how and in what medium it should be represented.
    >> It is this which has enabled human culture to develop such breadth
    >> and depth. Unlike genes, which have just one medium and system of
    >> representation (RS), in culture not only the information itself has
    >> evolved but also its RSs and media.
    >
    >
    > I think that it's important to distinguish between memes, as units of
    > cultural transmission, with what is done with them. Human imagination is
    > much more powerful and varied than animal imagination, if we may even
    > speak of such. And there are kinds of memes that can only be human. But
    > they constitute only part of human culture. And it's not the other way
    > around. I don't know of any type of meme (unit of cultural transmission)
    > in animal culture that doesn't also exist in human culture. That's why I
    > think it is preferable to have a broad definition of memes, even broad
    > enough to encompass animal culture.
    >
    > Ciao,
    >
    > Bill
    >
    > ===============================================================
    > 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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