Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id OAA14991 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Fri, 8 Jun 2001 14:16:21 +0100 X-Originating-IP: [209.240.220.151] From: "Scott Chase" <ecphoric@hotmail.com> To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Subject: Re: USA Today - interview with Gugatkin and de Waal on animal culture Date: Fri, 08 Jun 2001 09:12:26 -0400 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed Message-ID: <F129M1JOMyQlmLFQG1000011f2e@hotmail.com> X-OriginalArrivalTime: 08 Jun 2001 13:12:26.0144 (UTC) FILETIME=[A9981200:01C0F01C] Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
>From: "Wade T.Smith" <wade_smith@harvard.edu>
>Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
>To: "Memetics Discussion List" <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
>Subject: Re: USA Today - interview with Gugatkin and de Waal on animal
>culture
>Date: Thu, 7 Jun 2001 21:18:29 -0400
>
>Hi Ray Recchia -
>
> >His and de Waal's accounts may just be persuasive enough to
> >convince humans it's finally time to open the door and allow animals into
> >the culture club.
>
>Or, perhaps, to remove "culture" from the behavior club....
>
>
Why? What would be wrong with using the word "culture" if defined in terms
of "nongenetic behavioral transmission" (see de Waal. 2001. The Ape and the
Sushi Master. Basic Books. New York, p. 237). The big problem would not be
in using the word "culture", but employing this term in a way that
anthropocentrically places humans within a charmed circle, removed from the
"lowly" animals.
One problem I could see would be the casting of cultural capacity in terms
of homology versus analogy. If other apes such as our chimp cousins can
exhibit traces of culture it would't be much of a leap to consider something
homologous underlying this, but if we attribute fish, insects or other
groups phylogenetically far removed from us with culture, then we might
consider if we are talking about the same phenomenon or something
superficially similar that has arisen via convergence.
If a sort of non-genic transmission of behavior that could have been called
culture existed in the common ancestor we shared with these other groups,
then homology might enter the picture. Did the stem group of the metazoans
have culture? It might be less contentious to think about the stem of the
human and non-human apes exhibiting something cultural. Crude tool usage by
chimps makes one wonder how unique the "third chimp" (sensu Diamond) really
is.
With no background in anthropology or primatology, I'm just babbling forth,
chewing my cud so to speak.
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