Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id OAA24703 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Wed, 18 Oct 2000 14:57:27 +0100 User-Agent: Microsoft Outlook Express Macintosh Edition - 5.0 (1513) Date: Wed, 18 Oct 2000 09:56:21 -0400 Subject: Re: Wimsatt on memes at the Uni Pittsburgh From: William Benzon <bbenzon@mindspring.com> To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk> CC: Timothy Perper/Martha Cornog <perpcorn@dca.net> Message-ID: <B6132441.5198%bbenzon@mindspring.com> In-Reply-To: <2D1C159B783DD211808A006008062D3101745A9F@inchna.stir.ac.uk> Content-type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
> From: Vincent Campbell <v.p.campbell@stir.ac.uk>
> Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
> Date: Wed, 18 Oct 2000 13:40:54 +0100
> To: "'memetics@mmu.ac.uk'" <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
> Subject: RE: Wimsatt on memes at the Uni Pittsburgh
>
>
> So what exactly is it that isn't known about culture by memeticists?
>
> I have stated ad infinitum about the deficiences of awareness of media
> theory in memetics- but note theory not knowledge, and I don't equate that
> with the memetics theorists not wanting to learn. If you're similarly
> positing that memeticists are unaware of existing theoretical frameworks for
> evaluating culture that already exist in other disciplines, then I'd concur.
I'm not so much concerned about those theoretical frameworks--I agree with
you, they're weak--but with the raw stuff that those frameworks are meant to
explain. Consider, for example, Spike Lee's current movie _Bamboozled_. The
movie has a documentary side to it, with lots of film clips and photos from
the history of film and minstrelsey. One might call these "memes." And, of
course, there are books about film history, about the images of African
Americans in films, and there are books about minstrelsey, etc. The people
who wrote those books had to do research on the memes they talk about.
I don't see memeticists reading and talking about those kinds of books, nor
doing any research into the primary artifacts on which such books are based.
Judging from the published memetics literature and from conversations on
this list, it seems unlikely to me that a card-carrying memeticist would
bother to get his or her hands dirty with the basic stuff of culture.
Long before Darwin came along there were naturalists who went out and looked
at plants and animals and made collections of them and classifed them and
quarreled about classification, etc. And of course Darwin himself did a lot
of work like that. Well, there are lots of people who do the same kind of
thing with paintings and poems and sonatas and flying buttresses and
Jacquard looms, etc. But memeticists do not avail themselves of this
"natural history" of cultural stuff, of memes.
> If however, you're saying that there is given knowledge that memeticists not
> only don't know but don't want to know, then I'd have to disagree
> profoundly, in terms of both the existence of given knowledge (there isn't
> any),
Like I said, it's not the "knowledge" I'm concerned about. It's the raw
data. Memetics seems to be mostly a coffee-klatcsh for theorists who wish
to remain unsullied by observations. Orthodox memetics is a genre of
science fiction.
>and the attitudes of memeticists (those of whom I've read, and
> conversed with via this list, have all shown a clear interest in learning,
> as far as I'm concerned).
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