Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id MAA07499 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Fri, 12 Jan 2001 12:06:07 GMT Message-ID: <2D1C159B783DD211808A006008062D3101745BC4@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: Fri, 12 Jan 2001 12:04:43 -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
>> Surely the important point is that, if nothing else, memetics
opens
>> people up to different disciplinary approaches,
> What different approaches? The people you've mentioned above have
not, as
> far as I can tell, made any new empirical findings or reinterpreted old
> stuff in new an insightful ways. For the most part, they don't exhibit
> any
> deep knowledge of things like history of ideas, art, music, religion,
> literature, linguistics, cognition, etc. They just do memetic recasting
> and
> speculation. >
>
That's not what I meant. I meant that it opens people interested in
memetics up to other discipline's established paradigms that they might not
have heard of. This may even result in that person rejecting memetics as an
idea, or seeing it as a re-worded version of some other theory that's
already well established, but they will have gained some multi-disciplinary
knowledge as a result.
It seems to me that critics of memetics assume that they know
everything about every discipline and those of us who don't should be
chastised for not knowing everything. Show me someone who knows everything
about communication theory, neurology, cognitive psychology, social
psychology, population genetics, ethology, theology, history (both natural
and human), and many other disciplines besides, then you can make that
point.
Besides none of these fields are free from uncertainties or debates,
even within those with widely established paradigms e.g. in this week's New
Scientist there's a piece on whether or not human evolution has essentially
stopped, with some big names (e.g. Steve Jones) disagreeing about whether it
has or hasn't.
>The memetic Emperor is absolutely without clothes. As far as I can
tell, it
> attracts Big Thinkers with Little Ideas.>
>
Big thinkers with little ideas... This could be taken as a
compliment. After all better than having little thinkers with big ideas
(that's how WWII started you know). Sometimes knowledge acquisition is
dramatic and profound (Darwin, Einstein), but largely it is gradual and
incremental, and for the most part we are all standing on the shoulders of
giants.
Vincent
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