Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id WAA17341 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Thu, 22 Mar 2001 22:53:37 GMT Message-ID: <3ABA8127.B0BD9BB4@wehi.edu.au> Date: Fri, 23 Mar 2001 09:48:07 +1100 From: wilkins <wilkins@wehi.EDU.AU> Organization: The Walter & Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.76C-CCK-MCD (Macintosh; U; PPC) X-Accept-Language: en To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Subject: Re: The Demise of a Meme References: <2D1C159B783DD211808A006008062D3101745D02@inchna.stir.ac.uk> Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="------------B09B5AFD14FA9CD112BF85C9" Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
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Vincent Campbell wrote:
>
> Yes, but Galileo's life was at stake over the principles which he troubled
> over sticking to, but he did so in the end.
>
> Professional death can be another risk- like that bloke who came up with
> continental drift, or Alvarez's catastrophism theory over the dinosaurs
> extinction- but such people stick to to their theories, and those who turn
> out to be right we celebrate their determination, those who turn out to
> bewrong we condemn their obstinacy.
*Professional* death, sure. That is the death (or non-proliferation) of
memes. This is entirely within the model as proposed by Hull (and to a
less-acceptable extent from a memetic perspective, Kuhn) of scientific
evolution. But none of the examples so far adduced shows the death of
anyone for scientific memes.
>
> Then of course there's Scopes monkey trial.
Nobody died, or even went to jail. And that was about a religious set of
memes, not scientific ones (anyone actually *seen* that textbook? It's
on the web somewhere in a law school site (search on Scopes trial). Not
exactly science so much as a triumphalist faith in progress. More
neo-Lamarckian than Darwinian.
-- John Wilkins, Head, Communication Services, The Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research, Melbourne, Australia Homo homini aut deus aut lupus - Erasmus of Rotterdam <http://www.users.bigpond.com/thewilkins/darwiniana.html> Content-Type: text/x-vcard; charset=us-ascii; name="wilkins.vcf" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Description: Card for wilkinsContent-Disposition: attachment; filename="wilkins.vcf"
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