Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id NAA10601 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-bounces@mmu.ac.uk); Tue, 9 Oct 2001 13:51:42 +0100 Message-ID: <49AB9D0C6521D84ABD017BF83CDF44C4013F5C09@xch1.ucc.ie> From: "Ryan, Angela" <ar@ucc.ie> To: "'memetics@mmu.ac.uk'" <memetics@mmu.ac.uk> Subject: RE: Memes inside brain Date: Tue, 9 Oct 2001 13:47:08 +0100 X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2653.19) Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by mail3.ucc.ie id f99ClAg07795 Sender: fmb-bounces@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
This comment raises a large number of interesting questions. A comment on
just one of them; while I don't know what precise information exists, my
impression is that the passage from oral to written may have been
experienced as a loss, not necessarily a gain of accuracy of transmission,
memory being replaced by inscription and as a result, memory becoming less
reliable. The references I would have in mind here are anecdotal; some Irish
writers talk about the long and detailed memories of Irish country people in
the 19th century, 'uncontaminated' by literacy; some fictionalised accounts
of Classical Greek culture talk of poets fearing the loss of skills
attendant on the writing down of poetic text, instead of learning them by
heart, etc. An 18th Gaelic poem Caoineadh Airt Uí Laogheire by Eibhlín Ní
Chonaill is a transition; while composed from one point of view, it is also
an inscription of poetic themes and forms which had been 'inscribed orally'
for hundreds of years before. Very ancient literatures such as Gaelic, Greek
and Persian seem to have generated text which was re-presented in
performance, from memory, within the aesthetic limits of elegant form.
Hypothesis: Is it possible that the advent of written inscription, the
dissociation of text generation and text transmission though in a linked
way, was what made what we now call memetics happen - or from another point
of view, become visible? I have been very interested by points brought up on
this list to do with cognition and physiology, but not having the background
to correlate them except superficially to my inquiry, would be grateful for
any suggestions.
Yours ever
Angie
ar@ucc.ie
Dr A.M.T. Ryan Agrégée de l'Université,
Department of French,
National University of Ireland, Cork,
Ireland.
telephone + 353 21 4902552
facsimile + 353 21 4903284
-----Original Message-----
From: dgatherer@talk21.com [mailto:dgatherer@talk21.com]
Sent: Monday, October 08, 2001 5:23 PM
To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Subject: Re: Memes inside brain
Angie:
This message is for me connected to a problem I have been thinking about for
some time: cultural inscription seems to have moved from oral, to written
and more recently to audio-visual forms: Irish literature was for example in
existence on moral-memory form before being written down. What has this
evolution meant, caused or been caused by, from a memetic point of view?
Derek:
It would be easy to surmise that pre-writing narratives would have to be
less reliably copied from one bardic generation to the next, and thus have a
faster rate of evolution. But I'm not sure how correct that assumption is,
as I understand that the Koranic scholars of parts of sub-Saharan Africa
have preserved their memorised works virtually intact for probably about 400
years.
Is there an accepted metric for quantifying the 'distance' between 2 texts?
Given, say, 7 versions of a narrative epic, could a pairwise distance matrix
be constructed? How would you handle cases where the plot was essentially
the same, but the text extensively rewritten? And what about the converse,
where the text was virtually identical but subtle changes alter the entire
complexion of the narrative?
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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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