Re: Darwinizing Culture: The Status of Memetics as a Science

From: Robin Faichney (robin@ii01.org)
Date: Fri Apr 20 2001 - 20:41:44 BST

  • Next message: Robin Faichney: "Re: Is Suicide Contagious? A Case Study in Applied Memetics"

    Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id VAA18079 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Fri, 20 Apr 2001 21:00:34 +0100
    Date: Fri, 20 Apr 2001 20:41:44 +0100
    To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
    Subject: Re: Darwinizing Culture: The Status of Memetics as a Science
    Message-ID: <20010420204144.C969@ii01.org>
    References: <2D1C159B783DD211808A006008062D3101745DC4@inchna.stir.ac.uk>
    Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
    Content-Disposition: inline
    User-Agent: Mutt/1.3.15i
    In-Reply-To: <2D1C159B783DD211808A006008062D3101745DC4@inchna.stir.ac.uk>; from v.p.campbell@stir.ac.uk on Fri, Apr 20, 2001 at 11:20:38AM +0100
    From: Robin Faichney <robin@ii01.org>
    Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk
    Precedence: bulk
    Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
    

    On Fri, Apr 20, 2001 at 11:20:38AM +0100, Vincent Campbell wrote:
    > You're right here Robin, it wasn't necessarily the best choice of phrase-
    > without qualification anyway. It's that old point that beliefs don't have
    > to be "true" and Gods don't have to exist to have effects and consequences.

    Yup. Gods are meme(plexe)s, just like Mickey Mouse, the Presidency of
    the United States and all the contents of the Library of Congress.

    > In that sense gods are still entities whether or not they really exist (in
    > the material sense of something you could, as the monkey king did in
    > 'Journey to the West', pee on. In his case he thought it was one of the
    > five pillars at the end of the universe, only to find out it was Bhudda's
    > fingers, and for his arrogance he was imprisoned under a mountain. at least
    > that's what happened in the TV version).

    :-)

    -- 
    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



    This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Apr 20 2001 - 21:07:22 BST