Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id PAA09515 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Tue, 24 Oct 2000 15:06:12 +0100 Message-ID: <2D1C159B783DD211808A006008062D3101745AB8@inchna.stir.ac.uk> From: Vincent Campbell <v.p.campbell@stir.ac.uk> To: "'memetics@mmu.ac.uk'" <memetics@mmu.ac.uk> Subject: RE: Wimsatt on memes at the Uni Pittsburgh Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2000 15:00:23 +0100 X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2650.21) Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
>It can go both ways, but memetrics has done neither.
Agreed it can go both ways and I'd admit I've yet to operationalise memetics
in either way, although I've been thinking out loud on this list about doing
so. I can't speak for others, but there can be a huge amount of personal
and professional livlihood involved in associating oneself with new,
untested theory, that makes it not straightforward to just come out of the
closet and get on with, let alone the mention of access to research funding.
>There's an endnote (pp. 325 ff.) in the 2nd edition of The Selfish
Gene
>where Dawkins tracks the spread of the idea of kin selection in the
>scientific literature. He gives this as an example of empirical
memetis.
>So there it is, in the canonical heart of memetics. But what
memeticists do
>this sort of thing? There's Michael Best and who else? This kind
of
>research doesn't require much in the way of hypothesis generating,
etc. You
>just follow the memes. Or, some time ago a guy--I forget his
name--made a
>brief appearance on this list and talked about work he'd been doing
>compiling a list of sightings of a meme about, I believe, some
particular
>kind of blotter acid. That's empirical work & it doesn't require
any grand
>hypothesis. But it does require work.
This sounds like bibliometric work to me, which doesn't examine the
processes by which certain authors/ideas come to dominate, which would seem
to be memetic questions. The fact that certain concepts are labelled and
then spread through an academic (or any other) population are easy to map
numerically and chronologically, but memetics asks another question about
the attributes of that concept that make it spread ('because it's right'
isn't good enough of course). So, the 'how' of a phenomena isn't
(necessarily) revealed by the measurement of it. That's kind of the central
question of memetics- we know social phenonema occur, but we don't know how
they are transmitted, how they start, or how one phenomena as opposed to
another spreads incredibly rapidly across a population.
After all, memetics itself has clearly spread through a number of
populations (I've started seeing it appear in newspaper articles now so
journalists have cottoned on to it), but how, if it's just a hollow,
unsubstantiated, un-researched concept?
Of course the question then is have memeticists actually researched this
kind of question, and I don't know (probably not).
>On the other hand, if you keep your ideas sufficiently fuzzy, they
can't be
>either refuted and confirmed and so you can continue the chatter.
That's philosophers wasting their time then :-)
I think this is a risk, but I don't see this kind of deliberate obfuscation
in at least some of memetics' key proponents. Blackmore's latest article in
Sci. Am. suggests clear avenues for empirical testing of the theory, and
she certainly has been involved in large scale testing of other theories
she's developed (e.g. her work in testing the probablity misjudgement
hypothesis over the causes of paranormal belief). Alongside that piece,
empirical testing of a key element of the theory- imitation- is shown to
have been observed in animals also, perhaps undermining it as a kind of
'uniquely' human attribute explaining the 'uniqueness' of human culture.
There's no doubt at the end of the day that memetics will have to put its
money where its mouth is, but you don't go all in before you know what game
you're playing, and I think that's the stage we're (still) at.
Vincent
[Just an aside to an earlier comment- It looks like my optimism about the
Mets was destroyed over the weekend. Ah well, those damn Yankees, they've
won it 25 times you'd think they'd let someone else have a go! At least I
can take solace in the folly of whoever wins calling themselves World
Champions, something most Brits find very amusing about American sports]
>
>
>
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