Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id HAA04351 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Fri, 4 Aug 2000 07:04:35 +0100 Message-Id: <4.3.2.7.2.20000804005033.00ceb370@pop3.htcomp.net> X-Sender: mmills@pop3.htcomp.net X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 4.3.2 Date: Fri, 04 Aug 2000 01:09:05 -0500 To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk From: "Mark M. Mills" <mmills@htcomp.net> Subject: RE: Hymenoepimecis In-Reply-To: <A4400389479FD3118C9400508B0FF230040E95@DELTA> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Derek,
At 08:41 AM 8/2/00 +0200, you wrote:
>Mark:
>It seems the wasp toxin is simply a crude way to perturb the neural system
>compared to the efficiency of language.
>
>Derek:
>Yes, that is a very good point. If an organism wants to influence the
>behaviour of another organism, it can use a variety of methods, among which
>we could count neurotropic chemicals and language. The point at which this
>becomes culture however, is the point at which the influenced organism
>become the influencer of another target organism, and so replication begins.
What about intra-neural-system replication?
Before a neural system can produce replicas of observed behaviors, it has
to replicate/process signals from cell to cell. It seems to me that one
cell is 'replicating' the behavior of another cell. Additionally, the
replicated behavior is environmentally sourced, not DNA sourced.
>The wasp-spider system stops at this point as the influenced spider has no
>further influence itself over other organisms (trivially, because it's dead,
>but also, in the case of the poison being non-fatal, because it cannot
>manuafacture the toxin itself - back to genes again....)
True, the spider does not influence other spiders. I'm only arguing that
the biology of spider memory might infer something about human memory and
our processing of cultural stimuli.
Mark
===============================================================
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
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Aug 04 2000 - 07:05:29 BST