Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id LAA20787 (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 11:49:06 GMT Message-ID: <A4400389479FD3118C9400508B0FF230010D1B77@DELTA.newhouse.akzonobel.nl> From: "Gatherer, D. (Derek)" <D.Gatherer@organon.nhe.akzonobel.nl> To: "'memetics@mmu.ac.uk'" <memetics@mmu.ac.uk> Subject: RE: The Demise of a Meme Date: Fri, 23 Mar 2001 12:42:15 +0100 X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2650.21) Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
>Only four people between you and Darwin? They must have been very old.
There's also the 'apostolic succession' of doctoral supervisors. I know who
my supervisor's supervisor was (my grand-supervisor), but I haven't managed
to get hold of his thesis to see who his was etc. A former boss of mine
traced her lineage back to Ernst 'Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny' Haeckel
as great-great-grandsupervisor (I was so jealous). Given that one almost
certainly shakes hands with one's supervisor at some point (even if
relations go downhill from there on in), it ought to be possible to have a
Haeckel number of 4 or 5 quite easily. Since he was only a little Darwin's
junior, I can believe a Darwin number of 4.
The implication is that just as Catholic (and indeed Anglican) priests can
apparently trace their apostolic succession of ordinations back to Jesus, so
should scientists be able to trace their successions back to some single
Ur-supervisor. Who might that be and when? (it's analagous to Vincent's
posed problem of a while ago, how far back do we have to go to find the
common ancestor of all living Englishmen? - how far back to Ur-supervisor?)
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