From: "Hans-Cees Speel" <hanss@sepa.tudelft.nl>
To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Date: Tue, 9 Feb 1999 13:13:47 +0100
Subject: Re: The drawbacks of memetic imperialism
Message-Id: <E10ACA3-0006cw-00@dryctnath.mmu.ac.uk>
post from martin de jong forwarded by hc speel
> I also sent this message yesterday, but it didn't arrive on
> your screens .
>
> This is a reaction to the discussion of Marsden, Price and
> Lynch on the use of memetics in the social sciences:
>
> I feel it's both impossible, unfruitful and undesirable to
> consider memetics as a replacement of existing social theories.
>
> 1) Impossible, because the scientific community will
> rightfully see this as imperialism. Not all current work in the social
> sciences is useless and memetics does not have an apocalyptic word on
> everything. It would be naive to presume that. It is promising, but has
> severe limitation many people on this list overlook. Never forget it is
> just one out of many aproaches, that all of us happen to like. And if it
> was just a 'simple heuristic' why would we be struggling endlesslyover
> the definition of memetics? 2) Unfruiful, because mixtures of theories
> are the best way to get ahead. Not antithesis, but synthesis leads to
> progress. Memetics developed the very same way. Memetics learns from the
> social sciences and vice versa. It is not a simple replacement or
> 'unification'. 3) Undesirable, because pluralism in science is virtue.
> Memetics in competition or cooperation is no exception to this rule. As
> some of us may know, Popper himself wrote about 'The open society and
> its enemies'. Let us take this lesson seriously.
>
> Best, Martin de Jong.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: I.Price@shu.ac.uk [SMTP:I.Price@shu.ac.uk]
> Sent: Monday, February 08, 1999 9:35 AM
> To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
> Subject: Re: RE: Papers critical of memetics
>
> Aaaron states
> :
> >We do not want scientists such as Polichak to
> misconstrue that we offer
> >memetics as a replacement to all the existing work
> in psychology,
> >sociology, anthropology, economics, linguistics,
> etc., or as a replacement
> >to existing work in specific sub-domains such as
> state-conditioned learning
> >and confabulation.
>
> Why not. One of the points about the memetic stance
> is that it offers us (as
> Paul Marsden has pointed out) a minimalist heuristic
> which can unify
> evolutionary approachs in all those disciplines.
>
> If
>
>
>
>
> ______________________________________________________________
>
> If Price
> Co-director
> Facilities Management Graduate Centre
> Sheffield Hallam University
> Unit 7, Science Park, Sheffield S1 1WB
> P +44 [0]114 225 4032
> F +44 [0]114 225 4038
>
> http://members.aol.com/ifprice/ifresch.html
>
>
> ===============================================================
> 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
Theories come and go, the frog stays [F. Jacob]
-------------------------------------------------------
Hans-Cees Speel
Managing Editor "Journal of Memetics Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission"
http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit submit papers to JOM-EMIT@sepa.tudelft.nl
I work at:
|School of Systems Engineering, Policy Analysis and management
|Technical University Delft, Jaffalaan 5 2600 GA Delft PO Box 5015 The Netherlands
E-mail hanss@sepa.tudelft.nl if that address fails try hanscs@usa.net or hanscs@xs4all.nl
http://www.sepa.tudelft.nl/webstaf/hanss/hanss.htm
usa mirror at
http://www.freeyellow.com/members2/hanss/index.htm
===============================================================
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