Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id NAA15278 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Tue, 27 Nov 2001 13:17:50 GMT Message-Id: <5.0.2.1.0.20011127075621.00a205c0@mail.clarityconnect.com> X-Sender: rrecchia@mail.clarityconnect.com (Unverified) X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 5.0.2 Date: Tue, 27 Nov 2001 08:11:29 -0500 To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk From: Ray Recchia <rrecchia@mail.clarityconnect.com> Subject: RE: Definition please In-Reply-To: <F166Kw5ZmrylLGP6i4w0000a9bb@hotmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Hi Scott Chase
At 11:18 PM 11/26/2001 -0500, you wrote:
>[...]
>Have you read the part of _The Ape and the Sushi Master_ where de Waal
>talks about memes? Would you say he casts memetics in a favorable light
>overall?
Well I'd call it a mixed bag and not particularly well thought out. Which
is understandable because it is not really his area of interest or the main
focus of the book.
On the one hand he acknowledges that behavioral inheritance and genetic
inheritance are concepts that can be conceptually linked. His main
objection seems to be an alleged attempt to over analogize genetics and
behavioral transmission. At the same time he uses the evolutionary term
'Lamarckian' to describe cultural transmission which I think is very
misplaced and a bad analogy.
His main objections involve the differences in transmission methods and
mutation. We know transmission is different for memes. It's part of what
memetics can explore. The 'genes are changed through random mutation and
memes are changed by more complicated processes' argument he lifted from
Gould. With things like meiotic crossing over, jumping genes, and sexual
recombination, genetic mutation isn't truly random either. As long as we
can say that there is a change in probabilities after mutation we can make
useful analogies.
This answer is a bit briefer than I'd like it to be but I have to get to work.
Ray Recchia
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