Date: Fri, 19 Mar 1999 20:31:33 -0800 (PST)
From: Tim Rhodes <proftim@speakeasy.org>
To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Subject: Re: Correction accepted: Meme Machine p. 45
In-Reply-To: <3.0.1.32.19990319132412.00a59e48@popmail.mcs.net>
GOOD LORD! The horror!!! Thank god your reputation is still in tact!
-Tim Rhodes,
always curious about the priorities
On Fri, 19 Mar 1999, Aaron Lynch wrote:
> In a field where hostility is sometimes vented in the form of aggressive,
> even pathological misreadings of a colleague's work, it is refreshing find
> corrections being graciously accepted for misreadings that happened as
> honest mistakes. Such is the case for a misreading of my work found on p.
> 45 of _The Meme Machine._
>
> In the last paragraph, it says "Some authors, however, imply that virtually
> everything we know is a meme (e.g., Brodie 1996; Gabora 1997; Lynch 1996).
> On reading this, I wrote to Susan Blackmore to point out that my 1996 book
> only considers "actively contagious ideas" --a subset of ideas generally--
> as memes. I also pointed out that my 1991 and 1998 papers very formally and
> explicitly rule out vast classes of memory items from consideration as
> "memes." She did not remember why she included my book in the list on p.
> 45, but agreed to drop it in future printings of _The Meme Machine._ I
> commend Susan Blackmore for accepting this correction intelligently and
> politely. Meanwhile, I will make efforts to be more emphatic an repetitive
> in my statements that only a special subclass of memory items are memes.
>
> I agree with Blackmore that Brodie 1996 and Gabora 1997 belong on the list
> of works implying that virtually everything we know is a meme. This is one
> of the most important differences between those works and my own.
>
>
>
> --Aaron Lynch
>
> http://www.mcs.net/~aaron/thoughtcontagion.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
>
===============================================================
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