Date: Mon, 21 Jun 1999 16:13:54 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Lawrence H. de Bivort" <debivort@umd5.umd.edu>
To: Memetics List <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: Paper on chimp culture
In-Reply-To: <B0003776593@hamextw01.htcomp.net>
On Sun, 20 Jun 1999, Mark Mills wrote:
>On the other hand, one could do memetic studies on chimp language use.
>How much effort is required to produce 100 word vocabularies in humans?
>in chimps? How many words does a human mother transfer to her baby in
>one year? How many signs does a signing chimp mother transfer? Does
>memetic agility measured by vocabulary size produce selective advantage
>for a chimp culture? What is the average 'life span' of a chimp generated
>sign? How quickly do chimps 'mutate' signs?
These questions tackle the issue of language transfer. I don't think that
that is quite the same as the transfer of an 'idea' or 'belief', which is
at the heart of memes. As we use the term, a meme is a 'belief' that is
framed in such a way that it is self-disseminating. The dissemination of a
word or phrase would not be, as we see it, an automatic demonstration of a
meme at work, though one might well scan disseminated language patterns to
see if any represented a meme at work.
Lawrence de Bivort
The Memetics Group
|---------------------------------------------|
| ESI |
| Evolutionary Services Institute |
| "Crafting opportunities for a better world" |
| 5504 Scioto Road, Bethesda, MD 20816, USA |
| (301) 320-3941 |
|---------------------------------------------|
===============================================================
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