Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id PAA05961 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Fri, 19 Jan 2001 15:44:59 GMT User-Agent: Microsoft Outlook Express Macintosh Edition - 5.0 (1513) Date: Fri, 19 Jan 2001 10:41:32 -0500 Subject: Re: Myths and Memes: Distinction? From: William Benzon <bbenzon@mindspring.com> To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk> Message-ID: <B68DB1B0.6B4C%bbenzon@mindspring.com> In-Reply-To: <A4400389479FD3118C9400508B0FF230010D1A4D@DELTA.newhouse.akzonobel.nl> 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
on 1/19/01 2:56 AM, Gatherer, D. (Derek) at
D.Gatherer@organon.nhe.akzonobel.nl wrote:
> I know very little about myths, but I do remember Levi-Strauss's bon mot
> that 'les mythes se pensent dans les hommes, et a leur ainsu' (the bit after
> the comma italicised in the original). You could probably write a whole
> thesis just on that. Mind you, the idea of myths somehow residing inside
> the brains (if you translate 'dans' in that way) of les hommes, and also
> being there without our knowledge (a leur ainsu) and that they somehow have
> a sort of autonomy (ie. they 'se pensent' themselves rather than being
> passively 'pensee' by us), is perhaps a little too internalist for me, so
> I'll leave it to people whose thinking tends more in the same direction as
> Levi-Strauss.
On Levi-Strauss, check out the final chapter ("The Wedding") of his The Raw
and the Cooked, and "The Story of Asdiwal" in Structural Antroplogy: Volume
II. You should also look at an anthology on The Myth and Ritual Theory
edited by Robert A. Segal. There are some remarks on Levi-Strauss and myth
in William Benzon and David G. Hays, "The Evolution of Cognition," Journal
of Social and Biological Structures 13(4): 297-320, 1990
>
> Nice to see that FSU are taking up some memetics, now that UWF are giving it
> a whirl as well. What is it about Florida and memetics? The number of
> people on this list who have some sort of Florida connection seems to me to
> be greater than random chance (although I should of course reread Sue
> Blackmore's work on the ad hoc misjudgment of probability before jumping to
> such a conclusion....).
All that hot air makes for hot heads and hot heads are fertile breeding
grounds for the internalist meme.
:)
BB
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