Date: Mon, 23 Jun 1997 09:24:19 +0000
From: Bill Benzon <bbenzon@meta4inc.com>
To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Subject: Re: Meme pools?/ evolution and ecology
Mario Vaneechoutte wrote:
> BB: > But what's going on when people see faces where there aren't
> any?
> >
> > What's going on when we look into the night sky and see bears and
> crabs and
> > people and even tell stories about how they got there. That's
> culture.
> > There we're imposing patterns which are meaningful to us on
> naturally
> > occuring patterns of energy (photons from the stars). Here we are
> using
> > pre-existing patterns and imposing culture on them.
>
> MV: This is human culture, when words start to interact. Do we impose
> culture on these objects? I'd say that we mix instantaneous, present
> perceptions (this is our possibility to perceive with eyes and ears)
> with perceptions and experiences which have been stored as words (this
>
> is our possibility to use language: encoding of such perceptive
> information).
I'd be wary of identifying culture too closely with words. Language is
surely important -- it's probably what makes the difference between
(very rich) human culture, and (rather impoverished) animal culture. In
my example, telling stories about the creatures in the sky requires
words, of course. But seeing creatures in the sky doesn't require words.
Here we are imposing patterns on sensory input, but the words come after
the fact.
Recall that tool-making goes way back in the archeological record --
though it flowers at about the same time we see burial sites, which is
also about when language as we know it would have to have started in
order to reach its current level of differentiation. Flaking flint
requires a great deal of visuo-motor interaction, but little in the way
of words. And learning to do it is mostly a matter of imitation, not of
verbal instruction.
> ===============================================================
> 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 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