Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id SAA18816 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Sun, 10 Jun 2001 18:09:36 +0100 Message-Id: <4.3.1.0.20010609224319.029148a0@mail.winstarmail.com> X-Sender: aaron@mcs.net@mail.winstarmail.com X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 4.3.1 Date: Sun, 10 Jun 2001 11:53:42 -0500 To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk From: Aaron Lynch <aaron@mcs.net> Subject: Homosexuality taboo-gene interaction hypothesis, etc. In-Reply-To: <20010609233114.AAA19466@camailp.harvard.edu@[205.240.180.1 27]> Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="=====================_84337631==_.ALT" Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
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I was recently asked to comment on a paper that appears to address one of
the many hypotheses I advanced in my 1996 book Thought Contagion: How
Belief Spreads Through Society (Basic Books). This was the hypothesis about
propagating homosexuality taboos causing increases in
homosexuality-inclining genotype frequencies, and of the increasing gene
frequencies subsequently favoring the spread of ideas that reverse the taboos.
My present communication will not comment on the paper for which I was
asked to comment, nor make a new attempt at discourse with its author.
Rather, I will point out just a few basic facts about my hypothesis.
1. The hypothesis was advanced in the 1996 book Thought Contagion, and was
only lightly summarised in my contribution to Journal of Artifical
Societies and Social Simulation, volume 2.
2. There is no discussion in any of my work about these taboos having an
inverse proportionality to frequencies of homosexuality. Nor did I intend
any implicit suggestion to that effect. (To the contrary, if tendencies
toward homosexuality were uniformly zero in 100% of the population, I would
not even expect the taboos to evolve in the first place.)
None of this is to say that the 1996 book was offered as the ultimate or
perfect work in evolutionary cultural replicator theory. In particular, the
book misattributes the theoretical paradigm of evolutionary cultural
replicator theory to Richard Dawkins's 1976 book The Selfish Gene (Oxford
University Press). The Selfish Gene actually cites the work of F.T. Cloak
modest 1975 paper "Is a Cultural Ethology Possible?," [Human Ecology 3(3):
p. 161-181], but that paper in turn cites Cloak's much more elaborated 1973
paper "Elementary self-replicating instructions and their works: Toward a
radical reconstruction of general anthropology through a general theory of
natural selection" presented at the Ninth International Congress of
Anthropological and Ethnological Studies. I have had a copy of that paper
since 1979, but had forgotten its publication preceded the publication of
Dawkins's 1976 book by 3 years. A scanned copy of the paper is now online
at http://www.thoughtcontagion.com/cloak1973.htm. Cloak had also done
extensive empirical work on cultural evolution, such as the field work that
led to his 1966 dissertation "A Natural Order of Cultural Adoption and Loss
in Trinidad," done at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. As
evolutionists, we often ask people to accept that complex life forms are
descended from simpler ones, and that complex cultures are descended from
simpler ones, rather than being divinely created or intentionally handed
down to earth from the heavens. In the case of evolutionary cultural
replicator theory itself, it turns out that the theoretical paradigm had
what some would consider "humble" origins, as distinct from being handed
down from the heights of the academic prestige system. In any case, the
1973 Cloak paper receives proper credit in a recent book contribution,
"Evolutionary Contagion in Mental Software" in Robert J. Sternberg and
James C. Kaufman (eds.) The Evolution of Intelligence (Lawrence Erlbaum
Associates), due out this month. Some further comments on the early history
of Cloak's work and the word "meme" are in the first two sections and first
two footnotes of "Units, Events, and Dynamics in the Evolutionary
Epidemiology of Ideas" at http://www.thoughtcontagion.com/UED.htm.
--Aaron Lynch
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