From: Chris Taylor (christ@ebi.ac.uk)
Date: Tue 26 Apr 2005 - 23:41:04 GMT
Hi all.
>> I think that maybe this is an example of the general tendency of
>> emigrant culture to change less than the parent culture. From what I
>> hear the English dialect that is the closest to Elizabethan English
>> is spoken in the hills of Tennessee, which are still pretty isolated.
>
> Interesting remark,
>
> We, as French from the mother land of the French language, see a
> similar phenomenon with the French language spoken by the Cajuns in
> Louisiana. It preserved some old French words and expressions, even
> some old sentence construction.
See now this islands of culture thing requires that we look to a
different part of evolutionary biology; in very small populations, there
are two options: (1) Die out (get swamped or invaded or absorbed by a
close relative [possible Neanderthal fate])) etc. or (2) cling for dear
life to what you have if it turns out that by chance it hangs together
(and the founder effect is important here also -- any such pop will only
contain a subsample of the variety in the source population). Very small
populations that don't disappear have single alleles fixed at just about
every location unless there is huge overdominance, and mechanisms often
develop to help maintain that fixity in sequence space (massive linkage
groups, reduced/zero recombination generally, parthenogenesis etc.),
which is then only threatened by something approximating Muller's
ratchet (= all the 'good' copies replaced by an unfit mutant allele by
chance). Basically, in tiny, isolated populations stochastic principles
mean that everything goes to fixation superfast and stays there, so if
there are hidden flaws or changes in the environment then exeunt omnes.
This is slightly confused by media channels etc. but only slightly.
The follow up remark from Paul is interesting too about the Canucks:
> Canadian French has developed interesting words for products and
> concepts that appeared with the industrial revolution and later on the
> automobile and the consumer culture.
>
> While the Metropolitan French language used its own words for these
> new products and concepts, Canadian French often used the closest
> possible available French word to translate the English word :
>
> Metropolitan French : voiture
> Canadian French : char
> English language : car
>
> Metropolitan French : boisson
> Canadian French : brevage
> English language : beverage
>
> Do we have here an adaptive memetic replication mechanism ?
There is also a community of people that are trying to keep Latin up to
date! This is a weird thing that may have no direct analogue in animal
biology as funny animal hybrids can't walk / eat / think as a rule; but
perhaps plants can throw us a bone here so to speak? The notion of a
defined species in plants is much less useful as there tend to be
gradations between apparent 'species' that bridge gaps either through
interleaving (ho ho ho) of bits of genomes keeping n = 2 or whatever, or
just adding genomes (hexaploid bread wheat, maize etc.); hence the
biological species definition is less useful and we have to look at the
inclusive species concept or something like that. And importantly the
hybrids can represent a species in themselves. Something you kind of see
in animal ring species but only in a limited way, and certainly you
don't see summation of genomes in animals if there is even a sniff of
recombination (phasmids do it, but not much else? Scott help me out here
as you may be the most widely-read guy in the world...).
In summary: Huge populations evolve slowly, smaller ones faster; but
beyond lower size limit, things get very weird...
To add some examples for the USAnian big population inertia thing; 80s
rock is still pretty popular afaik (at least a trawling of the radio on
recent visits would seem to suggest that); and there is some resistance
to (for example) novel foods -- invasion of a new allele is just as
unlikely as loss of an old one, for the same basic reasons (to get to a
level of penetration that causes an effect requires a lot more luck --
to stay with the food example, why open a restaraunt selling
atomic-strength curries if your market is non-existent -- note that
atomic-strength chilli has a market though so it isn't just a palate thing).
I am trying hard not to make this sound like some sort of cultural
critique. To underline that let me make the split point that (1) a large
population provides much more novelty even though most of it is lost
again almost immediately and (2) by extension, if something makes it
there, it is one goddamn superfit thing (allele, meme, whatever). When a
new musical form comes from the US (blues, jazz, seattle grunge) it
generally takes the world by storm. Big populations rock in both the
literal and the metaphorical sense :)
Cheers, Chris.
By the way sorry for flouting my screaming atheism -- I don't mean to
offend, but I'll never personally get how it is that that sits well in a
mind in any meaningful sense. It all just seems like so much
storytelling (which, I admit, should appeal to a biologist). There is an
effect that is good -- churchgoers live longer (we are social animals
that thrive on it), it breeds community, it rationalises some strange
features of our neuroanatomy (who was the guy who found the 'god spot'
with magnetic field stimuli?) and so on.
But why is it that a literal god is not just another alien (fire in the
sky, prophets with superweapons, handy dietary advice, apparently de
novo takes on civil society and a strong recommendation to wash when
going to see the big guy in the temple, centuries before Pasteur)? And
if not a literal creator god (the 'newer' heavily interpretive approach,
god-in-everything-style almost New Age karmic stuff), then, huh?
I can't say how we are here, and whatever we define as the universe must
exist somewhere, which is itself somewhere (repeat ad infinitum --
thinking this stuff through is my favourite sport -- I want to break my
mind); and then there's time, and the question "why is there anything"
and its even freakier sibling "what would it mean if there wasn't
anything". But I can't just take a pat explanation (and I was extremely
disappointed to see Astronomer Royal, Professor Sir Martin Reece's take
on this, which was essentially that 'god' is as likely an explanation as
anything else).
Finally, the thought of a deity that requires to be told how great it is
on a regular basis hardly screams infallible and omniscient. More like
the great and mighty Oz. Anyway each to their own. Rant over.
If there is more than this nasty, brutish and short existence, believe
me I'll be the most chuffed of all of us!
And I'd love to see my Dad again, I was eight the last time.
nn all.
Trehinp@aol.com wrote:
> Dans un e-mail daté du 26/04/2005 20:51:30 Paris, Madrid,
> bspight@pacbell.net a écrit :
>
> I think that maybe this is an example of the general tendency of
> emigrant culture to change less than the parent culture. From what I
> hear the English dialect that is the closest to Elizabethan English is
> spoken in the hills of Tennessee, which are still pretty isolated.
>
> Interesting remark,
>
> We, as French from the mother land of the French language, see a similar
> phenomenon with the French language spoken by the Cajuns in Louisiana.
> It preserved some old French words and expressions, even some
> old sentence construction.
>
> The phenomenon exists with Canadian French but to a lesser degree.
>
> Canadian French has developped interesting words for products and
> concepts that appeared with the industrial revolution and later on the
> automobile and the consumer culture.
>
> While the Metropolitan French language used its own words for these new
> products and concepts, Canadian French often used the closest possible
> available French word to translate the English word :
>
> Metropolitan French : voiture
> Canadian French : char
> English language : car
>
> Metropolitan French : boisson
> Canadian French : brevage
> English language : beverage
>
> Do we have here an adaptive memetic replication mechanism ?
>
> Paul
-- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 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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