Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id MAA04445 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Fri, 26 Jan 2001 12:04:05 GMT Message-ID: <3A71672B.C83801F@bioinf.man.ac.uk> Date: Fri, 26 Jan 2001 12:01:47 +0000 From: Chris Taylor <Christopher.Taylor@man.ac.uk> Organization: University of Manchester X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.7 [en-gb] (WinNT; U) X-Accept-Language: en,pdf To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Subject: Re: Memes and emotions References: <F95YW8BYXifWoqFXfyY00001321@hotmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
It's the old view of the world (started with the Greeks and only really got altered
by the Enlightenment-era French biologists such as Cuvier: There is a hierarchy with
slime at the bottom and angels in heaven at the top; we come just below angels (these
were religious people - angels exist [no joke!], and are better than mortals), then
(roughly) animals, plants, mould and finally dirt (officially dead). This is the
classic linearised classification system as adopted from the Greeks by Christianity.
Linnaeus and Cuvier were instrumental in moving towards a more realistic branched
'Tree of life', on the way to a modern view.
I (flippantly) used the image because it assisted in the point I was trying to make
that memes only work well in us (recombining parts of ideas), the next link down the
great chain is where they can imitate well but not 'think' as we do, then you get
down to individual learners who do not share experience (paralelling the argument
about asexual clonal reproduction being far inferior to sexual), and finally the
hard-wired often non-neural behaviour of simple organisms.
Gotta go to a meeting - hope that covers it all!
Chris.
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Chris Taylor (chris@bioinf.man.ac.uk)
http://bioinf.man.ac.uk/ »people»chris
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