RE: The Status of Memetics as a Science

From: Lawrence DeBivort (debivort@umd5.umd.edu)
Date: Fri Apr 20 2001 - 21:33:08 BST

  • Next message: J. R. Molloy: "Re: Darwinizing Culture: The Status of Memetics as a Science"

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    From: "Lawrence DeBivort" <debivort@umd5.umd.edu>
    To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
    Subject: RE: The Status of Memetics as a Science
    Date: Fri, 20 Apr 2001 16:33:08 -0400
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    Hi, Robin, if that question is for me, I don't have think of memetics as a
    science (not that it might not be approached as such by others), and have
    faith in neither science nor memetics, if I understand your use of the term
    'faith' correctly. Do science and memetics seem useful? Yes, and that is
    pretty much good enough for me. But the usefulness is something that proves
    itself continuously. It does establish some expectation in my mind about the
    likelihood of its continued usefulness, but I don't think of this
    expectation as 'faith' in any sense of the word being used here.

    - Lawrence

    -----Original Message-----
    From: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk [mailto:fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk]On Behalf
    Of Robin Faichney
    Sent: Friday, April 20, 2001 3:36 PM
    To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
    Subject: Re: The Status of Memetics as a Science

    On Thu, Apr 19, 2001 at 04:54:41PM -0700, J. R. Molloy wrote:
    > From: "Lawrence DeBivort" <debivort@umd5.umd.edu>
    > > I find little difficulty in distinguishing religion from memetics.
    Memetics
    > > models and tracks the spread of ideas and beliefs. Religion is composed
    of
    > > beliefs (whether they are 'correct' or not). At a mimimum, then,
    memetics is
    > > meta to religion.
    >
    > In further support of your excellent comments, I'd add that memetics is to
    > religion as science is to faith.

    How does faith in memetics as a science fit in there?

    --
    Robin Faichney
    Get your Meta-Information from http://www.ii01.org
    (CAUTION: contains philosophy, may cause heads to spin)
    

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