Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id PAA00282 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Wed, 10 Jan 2001 15:39:01 GMT Message-ID: <2D1C159B783DD211808A006008062D3101745BB3@inchna.stir.ac.uk> From: Vincent Campbell <v.p.campbell@stir.ac.uk> To: "'memetics@mmu.ac.uk'" <memetics@mmu.ac.uk> Subject: RE: DNA Culture .... Trivia? Date: Wed, 10 Jan 2001 15:37:31 -0000 X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2650.21) Content-Type: text/plain Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
>>Vincent:
... why does monotheism succeed so dramatically in
> industrial societies?>>
>
>Derek:
> I think I'd answer that by asking: but has it? The last 250 years that
> Europe has been industrialised have been the 250 years that have seen the
> greatest decline in religion.>
>
True, true. I'm also kind of assuming that monotheism does continue to
dominate those believers left, which may be formally/institutionally true,
but not necessarily true in practice (e.g. those polls that suggest more
people follow astrology or believe in ufos than in Jesus).
>Derek:
> But aside from that, I should have added that of course correlation
> doesn't
> tell us anything about causation, granted, but I do think that it does
> help
> us to _rule out_ hypotheses of independence. What I mean is, the idea
> that
> monotheism is just something that is easier to memorise, would suggest
> that
> where monotheism arises, it should spread out virally from its point of
> origin. Therefore what we'd see would be blotches of monotheism radiating
> out from epicentres, covering a variety of peoples _independently_ of
> other
> factors. Since this isn't the case, we can exclude the independence of
> monotheism from other factors. That makes it unlikely that it is simply a
> thought contagion - there must be a selective (dis)advantage at work.>
>
Yes, I see what you mean.
But, perhaps the initial conditions in which monotheism emerged limited the
opportunities for dissemination beyond the immediate communities in which it
arose. If agriculture is a key to the emergence of montheism, then one of
the other novelties of early agricultural communities was the emergence of
large, stable, unmoving communities- the first cities. Perhaps, monotheism
would spread within the community with relative rapidity but stop at the
gates of the city (metaphorically speaking, of course)?
Whilst ease of tranmission may not be the most important causal factor, I
can't help feeling that it's still a factor. I've been sat here for a while
now trying to write something to explain what I mean, and I keep deleting
what I write. I think I need to go off and work it through a bit more. I
can't seem to get past the feeling that having one god instead of dozens is
easier to tell your kids about, easier to proselytize to strangers to, or
that having simple sets of rituals and rules makes it easier to follow. It
may not be the most important causal factor, but I can't see it being
irrelevant. It's a supposition though, lacking empirical evidence.
I suppose a superficial test would be to correlate certain factors of
particular religions e.g. number and length of sacred texts, number of
specific rituals and practices followers should observe etc. etc. to
historical rates of uptake of the religion. One could/should probably
include pseudo-religious practices, like astrology.
Maybe this has been done in the work suggested by William Benzon, I don't
know, I'm not familiar with it.
Vincent
> ===============================================================
> 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
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Jan 10 2001 - 15:40:30 GMT