A kindred soul!
-----Original Message-----
From: Dan Plante <dplante@home.com>
To: virus@lucifer.com <virus@lucifer.com>
Date: Tuesday, May 04, 1999 3:12 AM
Subject: Re: virus: Dawkins Refers to Church of Virus
>At 08:14 PM 03/05/99 -0700, Rhonda Chapman wrote:
>
>>Dan Plante wrote:
>>
>>>He [Steven Pinker ] seems to percieve on an intuitive level that the
>>>mind/conciousness is the emergent result of interation between memes,
>>>intelligence and emotion. I find it rather ironic that the evolutionists
>>are way
>>>off base, and the linguist has it nailed.
>>
>>Don't sell linguistics short.
>
>I wouldn't dream of it. My deliberately superficial treatment of the
>distinctions between the two was merely a vehicle to transport a
>well-deserved kick-in-the-pants (in the form of a point of irony) to the
>evolutionist camp.
>
>>It's a very complex science which combines
>>logic and intuition. Any half-way decent linguist has to be a terrific
>>analyst!
>
>You're preaching to the choir here, Rhonda. I've always regarded top-notch
>linguists (chompsky, et al?) as some of the first true memetic engineers.
>The field's ability to track the prehistorical movements and offshoots of
>ethnic groups, and to deconstruct and characterise the beginnings of
>different languages in prehistory, rivals what genetic engineers have been
>able to do with nuclear and mitochondrial DNA respectively. I have always
>found this to be a telling example of how memetics is as evolutionary as
>genetics.
>
>>(Okay I have a bias here, I admit it).
>
>Really. Why?
>
>>Anyway, thanks for passing on an interesting article.
>
>Just quoting a post by David McFadzean, but you're welcome anyway.
>
>Dan
>