Re: Theorists See Evolutionary Advantages In Menopause

From: Kenneth Van Oost (Kenneth.Van.Oost@village.uunet.be)
Date: Sat Dec 01 2001 - 21:13:14 GMT

  • Next message: AaronLynch@aol.com: "Units, Events, and Dynamics in the Evolutionary Epidemiology of Ideas" 

    Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id VAA26534 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Sat, 1 Dec 2001 21:13:32 GMT
Message-ID: <000901c17aac$fe40aea0$2da0bed4@default>
From: "Kenneth Van Oost" <Kenneth.Van.Oost@village.uunet.be>
To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
References: <0AFA9B7B-E42F-11D5-86B0-003065A0F24C@harvard.edu>
Subject: Re: Theorists See Evolutionary Advantages In Menopause
Date: Sat, 1 Dec 2001 22:13:14 +0100
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
X-Priority: 3
X-MSMail-Priority: Normal
X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.00.2314.1300
X-MIMEOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2314.1300
Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk
Precedence: bulk
Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk

    ----- Original Message -----
    From: Wade Smith <wade_smith@harvard.edu>
    To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
    Sent: Wednesday, November 28, 2001 7:37 PM
    Subject: Re: Theorists See Evolutionary Advantages In Menopause

    > > http://www.massey.ac.nz/~i75202/lecture5/docs/menop.htm

    Hi Wade,

    I have read the article, thanks for the link.

    But, by the same token I wish to add, that nature not only changed women
    in order to hold information and to instruct the youngsters.
    Long before I ever came in contact with memetics I was deep in biology
    and sociobiology. Writing about that kind of stuff I went on to develop some
    kind of theory that nature tricks sometimes itself in developing strategies
    to overcome problems.

    If we take the position of the todays working females, children are atleast
    a burden ( no offence intented), in the morning they must get to school,
    in the evenings they must get back to the house.
    If you have, as a woman, a career to follow, children are in the way.
    But nature, in a way, solved the problem by adding a few years onto the
    grandparents. And that worked nicely for some time.
    Just at the point that the grandparents found that in raising another
    generation
    there was no gain left for them.

    So what to do next !?
    Building nurseries and day care centers would be the solution, but in order
    to do that you need trained people. And in the short run there were any.
    Nature changed the whole of the ballgame, by adding some ' new categories '
    for looking after the children. People who had a lot of free time, people
    who liked children very mush.
    I know it sounds a little bit daft but homosexuals, disabled people, the un-
    employed, the singles, childless people were added.

    This is not exactly what J Diamond had in mind, his essay considered a more
    natural selection kind of evolution, where I see the above as a more meme-
    tic type of evolution.
    Just wanted you to know.

    Regards,

    Kenneth

    ===============================================================
    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

    This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sat Dec 01 2001 - 21:19:44 GMT