Re: Words and Memes

From: Scott Chase (ecphoric@hotmail.com)
Date: Mon Feb 11 2002 - 19:36:15 GMT

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    From: "Scott Chase" <ecphoric@hotmail.com>
    To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
    Subject: Re: Words and Memes
    Date: Mon, 11 Feb 2002 14:36:15 -0500
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    >From: "Grant Callaghan" <grantc4@hotmail.com>
    >Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
    >To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
    >Subject: Re: Words and Memes
    >Date: Mon, 11 Feb 2002 07:16:31 -0800
    >
    >>Which is why it doesn't make much sense to regard memes as tools. Ideas
    >>are
    >>tools. Ways of doing things can be thought of as tools. Memes spring up
    >>when the tools start running on auto-pilot.
    >>
    >>Ted
    >
    >I find it hard to separate ideas from memes. And how can the person who
    >picks up a new meme have it running on autopilot as soon as he picks it up?
    >Or wasn't it a meme he picked up?
    >
    >
    Maybe a mentifact, a part of the noosystem...using the noogenetic approach
    that is.

    I wonder how L-memes and G-memes could be squared with mentifacts. socifacts
    and artifacts, three thingies that relate to "social heritage" (see David
    Bidney's _Theoretical Anthopology_. 1967. Schocken Books. New York, p. 130).
    Mentifacts are especially intiguing as Julian Huxley presents them, their
    summation pertaining to the noosystem.

    In his essay "Evolution, Cultural and Biological" Huxley says:

    (bq) "Mentifacts thus serve as the psychological framework of culture, the
    mental organs of man in society. They express awareness or experience in
    various organized ways- aesthetic and symbolic as well as intellectual- and
    communicate and transmit these organizations of experience to others." (eq)

    Has anyone done a detailed comparison between Huxleyian noogenetics and
    Dawkinsian memetics?

    See:

    Julian Huxley. 1957. Knowledge, Morality and Destiny (original title: New
    Bottles for New Wine). A Mentor Book, New American Library. New York

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