From: Kate Distin (memes@distin.co.uk)
Date: Fri 14 Apr 2006 - 18:54:22 GMT
Jesse Micheal Fagan wrote:
> For instance, from this quote: "Replication is not a
> necessary component of an interesting Darwinian process, and may not be
> involved in the explanation of human culture..." I become a bit
> confused on what a Darwinian process is. Can someone help me
> understand how a process can be Darwinian without replication of some
> sort? It seems to me that if the meme does not replicate than it's
> not a meme and if culture does not evolve from replicating components
> like memes then memetics is probably not the course we want to take in
> describing cultural evolution.
Darwinism needs traits to be passed on from one generation to the next,
but people like Boyd and Richerson have argued in the case of culture
that this need not be via the replication of specific bits of
information. They have argued against cultural replicators and for a
variety of other mechanisms. See e.g. their paper in Aunger's
collection, "Darwinizing Culture" - or Robert Boyd generously makes many
of their publications freely available on his website, at
http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/anthro/faculty/boyd/Publications.htm.
Kate
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