From: "Paul Marsden" <PaulMarsden@msn.com>
To: "memetics" <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
Subject: Horizontal and Vertical Transmission
Date: Tue, 2 Feb 1999 15:02:25 -0000
Nick Rose said
>Transmission. Genes are exclusively vertical in their
>transmission (parents to kin) whereas culture and viruses
>can transmit horizontally (i.e. to non-kin).
No I disagree with you Nick, this involves conflating genetic and cultural
lineages and is confusing. From a cultural lineage, genetic transfer is
horizontal and cultural transmission is vertical. Memetic transfer cannot
be anything but vertical (telepathy notwithstanding).
Paul Marsden
Graduate Research Centre in the Social Sciences
University of Sussex
e-mail PaulMarsden@msn.com
tel/fax (44) (0) 117 974 1279
Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission:
http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit/
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