From: "Aaron Agassi" <agassi@erols.com>
To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
Subject: RE: Not a comprehensive theory
Date: Mon, 2 Aug 1999 11:51:36 -0400
In-Reply-To: <003601bedcd9$f13eef00$fb74063e@paul>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk [mailto:fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk]On Behalf
> Of Paul Marsden
> Sent: Monday, August 02, 1999 7:26 AM
> To: memetics
> Subject: Re: Not a comprehensive theory
>
<snip>
>
> [...] I do agree with your
[another poster's]
>implication that, Blackmore's
> reduction of all
> culture to imitation in MM is too restrictive. Rather, the term
> memetic may
> usefully be applied to all that is socially learned
> (observational learning,
> vicarious learning, stimulus enhancement, contagion, instruction AND
> imitation), i.e. all that is cultural as opposed to all that is
> genetically
> inherited or individually acquired information.
Does it then become a meme, at first transmission? Then what was it before?
Perhaps a meme should be defined by transmissibility, not prior
transmission. That's how one thinks of memes when one contemplates inventing
new memes. Thus some genetically inherited or individually acquired
information may prove memetic, and other genetically inherited or
individually acquired information may prove not memetic, or just poorly
transmissible, under whatever circumstances.
>
> Hope this is useful
>
> Paul
>
> Paul Marsden
> Graduate Research Centre in the Social Sciences
> University of Sussex
>
> P.Marsden@sussex.ac.uk
> Paul.Marsden@newscientist.net
> http://www.sussex.ac.uk/Users/hbpe2/darwinia.htm
> ICQ 35642304
> Tel (44) (0) 958 733 414
>
<snip>
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