Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id UAA03554 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Thu, 3 Aug 2000 20:27:22 +0100 Message-Id: <4.3.1.0.20000803140024.02798e70@popmail.mcs.net> X-Sender: aaron@popmail.mcs.net X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 4.3.1 Date: Thu, 03 Aug 2000 14:20:52 -0500 To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk From: Aaron Lynch <aaron@mcs.net> Subject: RE: memes in minds, or memes in media? In-Reply-To: <2D1C159B783DD211808A006008062D310174597A@inchna.stir.ac.uk > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
At 01:52 PM 8/3/00 +0100, Vincent Campbell wrote:
> You said-
>
> >'I am not interested in expanding the subject to cover plural noun
>forms or
> > the quantitative analysis of horizontal versus vertical transmission. (The
> >
> > latter is covered in my 1998 paper and some post-publication commentary at
> >
> > http://www.mcs.net/~aaron/UEDerrata_addenda.html.) My only question
> > relating to my book had to do with wording, and it was an extremely
> > limited
> > question: Can you find one (and just one) sentence where the word "meme"
> > was crucial to saying what was said. I don't see such a sentence quoted
> > above.'
> >
> Well, I haven't finished reading the book yet, so give me a chance!
>But I still think it's semantic point assuming you mean you're going to
>change meme for thought contagion. You're still talking about a mechanism
>of belief tranmission, which requires definition and explanation.
>
>You go on-
>
> >'As it happens, I already feel confident of my ability to rephrase
> > things said in my book without the word "meme" for three reasons. First,
> > my
> > unpublished work, including chapters of a more technical book, went
> > without
> > the word "meme" for a long time before 1988, because I already had a
> > problem with the definitional vagueness in _The Selfish Gene_. '
> >
>So you had problems with the term in 1988, but still used it in the title of
>a book, and throughout, which you produced 8 years later. And the
>motivation for this was?
>
>Then you say-
>
> >'Second, forthcoming works that do not have the word "meme" have
>not caused problems with editors or reviewers. Third, a book that does not
>use the word "meme"
> > at all generated only a few mild words of complaint for not citing the
> > meme
> > literature in an otherwise laudatory review in _New Scientist_ by Paul
> > Marsden. I think the book (Gladwell's _The Tipping Point_) also received
> > some good reviews from people who do not use the word "meme." In any case,
> >
> > I see little to indicate that omitting the word "meme" caused any
> > communications problems for Gladwell among memeticists or
> > non-memeticists.'
> >
>I saw Paul's review where he makes the link between Gladwell's ideas and
>memes. I look forward to reading Gladwell's book, and have no problem with
>him not using the word meme. I don't see it as a life or death term. As I
>said in the original post, my point was nothing really to do with 'meme' as
>a term, but in trying to re-legitimise sometimes highly problematic work in
>other fields because it appears to fit into whatever conception of memetics,
>thought contagion, cultural evolution, evolutionary epidemiology of ideas or
>whatever else people want to call the very broad area we're all interested
>in here.
>
>This was not a criticism of your work, as the kind of claims I was
>criticising don't really feature in what you've written. But many others do
>persistently see media-determined behaviours (with the most extreme versions
>being the likes of Phillips seeing this even in things like car crashes)
>which begs all sorts of cause-effect questions which those of us in mass
>communication/media studies have been considering and analysing for a very
>long time indeed.
>
>We all have our hobby-horses, and this one's mine. I don't see in any of
>the memetics material I've read (and I want to Read Gladwell's meme-free
>theory to see if it too suffers from this) any detailed awareness of media
>theory or the body of empirical knowledge gathered over at least the last 70
>years about the media. Some of that theory, and particularly some of the
>empirically gathered data, would undoubtedly underscore people's theories,
>some of it- more than a lot of people might think- would undermine it. The
>same is true in the other direction also, and even if memetics itself turns
>out to be a red herring, then at the very least it may have served a purpose
>in briding the gap between scientists and social scientists.
>
>The important point in any argument is the weight of evidence. Any argument
>is only as strong as its weakest piece of evidence. Terminology at the end
>of the day is meaningless if the evidence doesn't stand up, and my original
>post in this thread was about evidence, not about terminology. Moreover, it
>was a criticism of a particular piece of 'evidence' raised by Paul Marsden,
>in his discussion of the work of Phillips. That's all it was, no more, no
>less.
>
>Vincent
I agree that we both have our areas of specialization, and different
preferences in theoretical frameworks. I am not interested in having my own
theoretical orientation or terminology retard the progress of your efforts
of your efforts or anyone else's efforts to see how much can be
accomplished with theoretical orientations different from my own. Empirical
evidence will hopefully be the criterion for judging whatever we may
explain or predict with our various theoretical orientations.
I also agree that my book gives relatively little attention to centralized
media phenomena, focusing more upon non-centralized recursive processes.
You may, however, find the discussion of the American radio talk show
hosted by Rush Limbaugh interesting. It is in chapter 7.
--Aaron Lynch
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