RE: virus: Meme, the Underlying Cause

Tadeusz Niwinski (tad@teta.ai)
Wed, 01 Oct 1997 17:06:27 -0700


Wade wrote:
>Robin wrote:
>>Memes are not mysterious forces controlling anything, just a useful
>theoretical construct
>>that allows the analysis of culture on an evolutionary model. And the
>observable aspect of
>>culture, the one that's amenable to a scientific approach, unlike thoughts,
>is behaviour.
>>Memes are behavioural abstractions.
>
>That is as close as I can get as well. (I tend to call memes cultural
>quanta.)

Genes are also abstractions, patterns which replicate. Can they be the
"underlying cause" when memes are not?

Regards, Tadeusz (Tad) Niwinski from planet TeTa
tad@teta.ai http://www.teta.ai (604) 985-4159