From: "Gatherer, D. (Derek)" <D.Gatherer@organon.nhe.akzonobel.nl>
To: "'memetics@mmu.ac.uk'" <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
Subject: RE: "Retarding the Progress" - A Call for Specifics
Date: Fri, 26 Feb 1999 17:15:49 +0100
Aaron wrote:
>What I see here is a distaste for that "calculus of mnemon
instantiations,"
>consistent with your emphasis on observable behaviours and
artifacts. It is
>an assertion of a stance, but I remain unconvinced that anything in
Lynch
>1996 or Lynch 1998 has retarded the progress of memetics in the
Hutterite
>case or any other example to which I have actually applied my
particular
>conceptualization.
You're right, I do have a distaste for the calculus of mnemon
instantiations, but that distaste is built on its internal difficulties (as
I have previously talked about) rather than any prior behaviourist agenda.
>As for the book title, I suppose it is partly a matter of taste. I
did,
>however, seek out the advice of some of those who had published in
memetics
>first. For instance, I distinctly remember Doug Hofstadter telling
me over
>dinner "that's a wonderful title!"
I have never had dinner with Douglas Hofstadter (nor indeed lunch with David
Hull). You do indeed keep exalted company. Hofstadter's work of the 70s -
I'm thinking of the stuff about self-replicating sentences, seems to me to
presage the current work being done by Pocklington and Best.
Derek
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