Re: The Status of Memetics as a Science

From: Wade T.Smith (wade_smith@harvard.edu)
Date: Sun Apr 22 2001 - 18:05:05 BST

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Subject: Re: The Status of Memetics as a Science
Date: Sun, 22 Apr 2001 13:05:05 -0400
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From: "Wade T.Smith" <wade_smith@harvard.edu>
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    Hi Robin Faichney -

    >But if you don't mean physically
    >isolate, just what do you mean?

    Define the mechanism- the steps required- the recipe. Aristotle did just
    that with his Poetics.

    We are increasingly defining the recipes of idea distribution (and
    replication, if you will), and a technology has developed.

    The human being ain't changed in thousands of years, so the mechanisms of
    affecting his perceptions ain't changed either. What has changed is the
    technologies of distribution.

    Recipes all physically isolate the ingredients, and the steps are
    isolated to produce an expected result. Drama has isolate ingredients,
    and recipes to elicit emotional responses, all fairly well-defined.

    Mechanisms of influence are linked cheek to jowl with mechanisms of
    perception.

    Memetics could, should, might, be the science that links the mechanisms
    of perception with the mechanisms of cultural stability.

    And all stable things exist within patterns.

    - Wade

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