Brett wrote:
>a meme be defined as: Any unit which
>acts as the smallest appropriate example of a
>patterned behavior. I assume by this definition
>that a patterned behavior is organized such that it
>replicates this *pattern* in other units of
>behavior.
Nowadays, when I think about it, I sorta look at
it as anything
Brett wrote:
>I personally like to skip the "behavior" of things
>and groups and go right to the "behavior of
>symbols".
Brett wrote:
>*yet the "meme", being at heart the *pattern* rather
>than the behavior, can only be observed in its
>behavior according to the unit studied (and between
>units)-- EXCEPT: At the level of "symbol", where a
>fixed pattern can be set-down and studied which has
>contained in it the elements which work together to
>replicate this pattern (like saying that in a
>sentence are the words and the grammar which impart
>the "meaning" of the pattern to another speaker who
>repeats this *pattern* using a different behavior or
>different words-- but the sentence itself can be
>written down and studied as a fixed symbolic form of
>the pattern whose elements are contained in it in a
>way that they might illustrate the "meaning" of the
>sentence).
Wade wrote:
>As in genetics, you take away the gene first, and see what
>goes or changes. Behavior is a base state, little more. You
>have to change it first.
Wade wrote:
>While the approach most of us seem to like, a study of
>culture's effects through individual's holding of behaviors,
>is a nice thing in and of itself, it is a study at most, not a
>science, not even, unless the maths get more complex,
>a discipline.
>It is, at present, a conjecture.
>All it's ever been, really.
Until such a time that brain imagery manages to pinpoint
memes, our study will help to bring the mindset needed to
study memes to more and more people. Not that this is
necessary. People will make way for science.
But do you really need this conjecture to study memes?
Probably not. But you will then have some other conjecture,
which might describe a different phenom when it refers
to 'memes'.
Wade wrote (about Wilson):
>His remark about leaving the ships of much of 'humanistic'
>science 'scuttled and burning on the shore' is apt, cogent,
>pithy, and just goddamn right. We need to move elsewhere.
Wilson who? When you say 'humanistic', just what do you
mean? Philosophy? History? Biology? Our sciences
will move away from a human-centric focus in time. The
Universe just contains too many things that aren't human.
Do we need to scuttle and burn those ships that are
human-centric? No. When they are needed no longer,
their own founders will abandon them.
Unless this 'science' mutates into a religion. Then it
will obey the raw laws of memetics, without having
anything useful to give to it's people. How does one
go about scuttling a science?
CA Cook, LF
coreycook12@email.msn.com
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