Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id UAA25696 (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 20:13:06 +0100 Message-Id: <4.3.1.0.20001018135939.01fb3c40@popmail.mcs.net> X-Sender: aaron@popmail.mcs.net X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 4.3.1 Date: Wed, 18 Oct 2000 14:11:47 -0500 To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk From: Aaron Lynch <aaron@mcs.net> Subject: Endangered book (was Re: Thank you Wendy) In-Reply-To: <Pine.WNT.4.21.0010180904270.142-100000@c157775-a.frndl1.wa .home.com> References: <B6132441.5198%bbenzon@mindspring.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
At 09:05 AM 10/18/00 -0700, TJ Olney wrote:
>Thank you! We (they) needed that.
>
>I often get the impression that this list is a pub discussion with winning
>and losing "points" the more important aspect.
>
>Over time different fields become populated with more intelligent people all
>searching for an intellectual niche to inhabit. We seem to become more
>rather than less resistant to ideas that others have thought and that
>parallel our own. In fact, the closer the idea, the more threatening it is.
>There is not much academic reward for the grand synthesis. (There might
>however be financial and personal reward, as one's audience is dramatically
>increased.)
>
>Many different fields have grappled with the same issues as memetics, but
>have expressed the issues and phenomena in a slightly differnt context or
>with a different vocabulary. I recently stumbled across a book written in
>the 50's in a library discard sale. It deals with social contagion and
>without using the memetic vocabulary, grapples with the same phenomena. While
>the memetic point of view can add to the work, it is still that, a point of
>view about the evolution and spread of ideas. I personally find it very sad
>and frustrating because it is a potentially illuminating point of view
>without the "scientific rigor" that will get it accepted as a mainstream
>point of view. I find it amusing, however, that many proponents of memetics
>can't/won't acknowledge that science and rigor can both be viewed memetic
>constructs.
Hi TJ.
In the hope that some of us may not feel too threatened by reading ideas
similar to our own, could you post the title of the 1950s book for us?
Perhaps it belongs on the the Journal of Memetics bibliography web page as
well. I suppose that even if people do feel threatened by this particular
book, and work to deflect attention from its thesis, it probably couldn't
do much worse than the library discard sale, right? Indeed, we might even
view it as the memetic equivalent of an endangered species!
--Aaron Lynch
>If you've missed my (much) earlier comments on Gregory Bateson and
>epistemology, you can either find them in the archive or I could forward them
>to you. He and his daughter Catherine Bateson wrote some brilliant stuff
>about the necessary tautology of explanation. Mathematics implicitly
>acknowledges it when we posit axioms and then assume that they are "true".
>Others on the list have alluded to it when they seek agreement as to the
>ontology of memetics.
>
>TJ Olney
>
>--
>-- TJ Olney market@cc.wwu.edu Not all those who wander are lost.
>-- http://mp3.musicmatch.com/artists/artists.cgi?id=113&display=1
>
>
>===============================================================
>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 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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