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

From: Scott Chase (ecphoric@hotmail.com)
Date: Sat Apr 21 2001 - 23:16:39 BST

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From: "Scott Chase" <ecphoric@hotmail.com>
To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Subject: Re: Darwinizing Culture: The Status of Memetics as a Science
Date: Sat, 21 Apr 2001 18:16:39 -0400
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    >From: "J. R. Molloy" <jr@shasta.com>
    >Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
    >To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
    >Subject: Re: Darwinizing Culture: The Status of Memetics as a Science
    >Date: Wed, 18 Apr 2001 16:33:32 -0700
    >
    >From: "Scott Chase" <ecphoric@hotmail.com>
    > > Memetics sets a distinction into the mindbrains of adherents, leading to
    > > interpretation of behavior through a meme-biased set of lenses.
    >
    >That being the case, I find it somewhat disingenuous to imply that memetics
    >is
    >a religion.
    >
    I made my point quite clear in the part you managed to snip from my post.
    Didn't I say something about following after entities that possibly don't
    exist? That was the parallel.

    Isn't there some sort of virus church BTW (see St. Dawkin's article in April
    19, 1999's issue of _Time_ magazine, p 52-3 ;))? Not that this would
    implicate memetics as a religion. It's more like a fad (an intellectual hula
    hoop).
    >
    >--J. R.
    >
    >Useless hypotheses:
    > consciousness, phlogiston, philosophy, vitalism, mind, free will, qualia,
    >analog computing, cultural relativism
    >
    > Everything that can happen has already happened, not just once,
    > but an infinite number of times, and will continue to do so forever.
    >
    See SJ Gould's _Wonderful Life_ for a lesson in replaying the tape of life.
    I'm reading it right now and it met my expectations (and then some!! aside
    from getting lost in the shuffle of obscure scientific names for the Burgess
    Shale fauna).

    [...]
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