From: "Britta Waschgler" <gemm@gemm.co.at>
To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: Memetics or artefactics?
Date: Mon, 7 Sep 1998 17:29:50 +0200
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-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: Mario Vaneechoutte <Mario.Vaneechoutte@rug.ac.be>
An: memetics@mmu.ac.uk <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
Datum: Montag, 7. September 1998 15:58
Betreff: Memetics or artefactics?
>Mario wrote:
>
>> Studying artefacts will learn us nothing if we can't look inside the
>mind. E.g.,
>> cave paintings of females by Cro Magnon people have been interpreted
>as
>being
>> part of fertility rites, while another more recent explanation says
>that it might
>> be just as well porn graffitti of male adolescents. What do artefacts
>learn you?
>
>Derek wrote:
>When looking at Cro-Magnon man, they're all we've got. If they don't
>teach us anything, nothing will. I certainly don't think we can, as
>you say, 'look inside the mind' of Cro-Magnon man. It's difficult
>enough looking inside the minds of contemporary living people.
>
>Mario:
>But Derek, this was exactly the point I wanted to make. I did not claim
>that we can look inside the mind of extinct Cro-Magnon. I justed pointed
>to the fact that - when you cannot look into the mind and when artefacts
>are all you've got to study, as in the case of Cro-Magnon - it is
>tremendlously difficult to say something about the mind - the ideas
>which lead to the production of these artefacts.
>To the opposite, a little information about the ideas of people, as we
>can gather through asking questions, immediately provides a lot of
>information on the objects they make or dances they perform and often we
>realize that our interpretation - based on our cultural background
>interpretation of the artefacts or dances - was completely wrong.
>
>What then do you want to study when you propose that memetics should be
>artefactics?
>Pottery?
>
>Mario
>
>
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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