Re: legend of Greyfriar's Bobby

From: Chris Taylor (chris.taylor@ebi.ac.uk)
Date: Fri 27 Jan 2006 - 10:22:56 GMT

  • Next message: William Benzon: "Re: legend of Greyfriar's Bobby"

    > Can you folks stand an EP analysis?

    Yeah I reckon, because there's something very deep going on here that goes waaaay back; and while I think you'd make a biological brain-structure argument and I'd make a kind of 'sub-memetic' argument (ignore that for now -- I just don't have a better phrase) the inputs and outcomes are the same if you squint a little (and your grasp of prehistory trumps mine).

    Incidentally, although lots of people have mentioned farmers and cat ppl as not 'dog ppl', clearly dogs do have a special place for more or less all of humanity. While we Brits (et al.) are a little mad about animals and therefore a bit skewing, nevertheless compare the place of the dog in cultures where they are nowhere near as 'prized' to that of any equivalently-sized indigenous mammal from that area (for instance, a European boar or pig); and bear in mind that they are just as adapted to us as we are to them.

    And in cultures where dogs just don't appear to have any status beyond tolerated feral/wild beast (like a wolf or fox), perhaps this close cultural bond has been lost rather than never having existed in the ancestral culture?

    Bring it on :)

    Cheers, Chris.

    P.S. On the tameability issue, there was a good documentary recently about a Russian (iirc) institute that had been breeding the wildness out of foxes over a long period and the effect seemed heritable.

    Keith Henson wrote:
    > At 07:52 AM 1/26/2006 -0500, Scott wrote:
    >
    > snip
    >
    >> But, beyond that, what is it about such stories that have an emotional
    >> impact upon people. I admit to geting choked up as I watched the
    >> depiction of the terrier's behavior on TV. There's gotta be something
    >> innate in this phenomonon, that such altruistic acts can result in a
    >> deeply felt emotional reaction.
    >
    >
    > snip
    >
    > Can you folks stand an EP analysis?
    >
    > Keith Henson
    >
    >
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    >

    -- 
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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      http://psidev.sf.net/
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    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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