Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id LAA20356 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Fri, 23 Mar 2001 11:08:22 GMT Date: Fri, 23 Mar 2001 09:41:22 +0000 To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Subject: Re: The Demise of a Meme Message-ID: <20010323094122.A520@reborntechnology.co.uk> References: <20010322122152.AAA13805@camailp.harvard.edu@[205.240.180.87]> <20010322134110.B577@reborntechnology.co.uk> <3ABA0D52.2F25FE03@bioinf.man.ac.uk> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.3.15i In-Reply-To: <3ABA0D52.2F25FE03@bioinf.man.ac.uk>; from Christopher.Taylor@man.ac.uk on Thu, Mar 22, 2001 at 02:33:54PM +0000 From: Robin Faichney <robin@reborntechnology.co.uk> Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
On Thu, Mar 22, 2001 at 02:33:54PM +0000, Chris Taylor wrote:
> > Observation without theory doesn't come within
> > a million miles of being scientific.
>
> It's interesting though (and this is an aside, not a comment on the main
> thrust) round where I am, there's a lot of this genome-wide gene
> expression data washing about, with people essentially fishing for
> interesting stuff and only then coming up with a theory to take account
> of it (if at all - all the big pharmers want is more drug targets to
> treat [not cure] illness, but perhaps they're more engineers than
> scientists). Rest assured that this industrial-scale arse-first approach
> is not without critics, but I think observation (in a less focused form)
> does predate theory formation in scientific investigation (although the
> two are both required obviously, otherwise you just have
> superstition/religion).
That both are required was my only point. I intended no implication
as to order. But any sentient creature observes, by definition.
Systematic theorising about observations is what makes science.
Wade's meme-free observations don't come within a million miles of it.
-- Robin Faichney Get your Meta-Information from http://www.ii01.org (CAUTION: contains philosophy, may cause heads to spin)=============================================================== 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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