Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id QAA01243 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Fri, 9 Feb 2001 16:36:05 GMT Message-ID: <3A841BF7.35478900@bioinf.man.ac.uk> Date: Fri, 09 Feb 2001 16:33:59 +0000 From: Chris Taylor <Christopher.Taylor@man.ac.uk> Organization: University of Manchester X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.76 [en] (Windows NT 5.0; U) X-Accept-Language: en To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Subject: Re: Darwinian evolution vs memetic evolution References: <20010209152236.AAA17854@camailp.harvard.edu@[128.103.125.215]> 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
> Is creativity a chicken/egg condition...?
Yes I agree that it is a bit - you have to bootstrap from somewhere;
that was also true of early life so we should look there for our
answers. Most of the novelty comes from variation on a theme (initially
*very* basic), pushed through a filter (I know I'm stating the obvious
but hey...). The difficulty of 'getting going' in a fairly simple
(mostly abiotic) environment is reflected in the long initial lag of the
slope of 'stuff' v time (some arbitrary measure of complexity of
organisms or ecosystems). Crash/recovery cycles are interesting too
(collapse of civilisations etc).
This model also nicely accommodates the strong postive correlation
between complexity, and rate of increase of complexity.
Who said that there is nothing new under the sun? I'd just like to slip
in an 'almost' before that nothing...
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Chris Taylor (chris@bioinf.man.ac.uk)
http://bioinf.man.ac.uk/ »people»chris
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