Re: The Demise of a Meme

From: Brent Silby (phil066@it.canterbury.ac.nz)
Date: Tue Mar 20 2001 - 22:30:32 GMT

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    Date: Wed, 21 Mar 2001 10:30:32 +1200
    From: Brent Silby <phil066@it.canterbury.ac.nz>
    Subject: Re: The Demise of a Meme
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    Richard Brodie wrote: "Science is most certainly not memeless. It is a set of carefully crafted
    memes designed to produce reliable knowledge and theories through
    observation and hypothesis. "

    Crafted? I'm not sure if that is the best word to use, as it implies purposive design. But, of course, scientific memes were not "designed", they are the result of natural memetic selection. It is accidental that science, or any other memeplex, is comprised of its collection of memes. It could have been a lot different -- in fact it has been during certain periods of history. Its just that science's current range of memes happen to be more successful self-replicators than some of their competing memes.

    Brent.
    ------------------------
    Brent Silby 2001
    Memetics Research
    and Engineering Project

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    __________________________________________

      ----- Original Message -----
      From: Richard Brodie
      To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
      Sent: Wednesday, March 21, 2001 10:00 AM
      Subject: RE: The Demise of a Meme

      Science is most certainly not memeless. It is a set of carefully crafted
      memes designed to produce reliable knowledge and theories through
      observation and hypothesis. People have died to propagate the memes of
      science.

      Richard Brodie richard@brodietech.com www.memecentral.com

      -----Original Message-----
      From: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk [mailto:fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk]On Behalf Of
      Wade T.Smith
      Sent: Tuesday, March 20, 2001 1:23 PM
      To: memetics list
      Subject: Re: The Demise of a Meme

      On 03/20/01 13:21, Tim Rhodes said this-

    >Thus proving that Wade will forever remain blind to the shamans of
    >science itself, locked as he is in their worship and magical dances.
    >;-)
    >
    >-Tim

      Oh, Timmy, Timmy....

      I dance, yes, but, science is without shamans.

      Science is the memeless observation of nature, not the local dance party
      for the rain gods.

      But I'm happy to dance at another party.

      - Wade

      ===============================================================
      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 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



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