List,
I am curious as to why Wade is looking to distill social information in such
a way as to limit "social" to the arena of human (is this the "cultural"
designation?). I am assuming that Wade is implying that a meme, being
"cultural" by definition, is necessarily limited to the human population. I
am making this assumption from the statement above ("we need to see in what
manner this *differentiates* from animal pursuits") since my approach would
be to see how it "is in cooperation with" or "builds upon" animal pursuits.
Seems Wade is trying to find an approach that would be specifically human,
no? What is the benefit to this human approach rather than the one which is
also applicable to "animal"? Is this an attempt to discern human from
animal using the "meme" as example? Comments?
Brett
At 10:46 AM 9/16/97 -0400, you wrote:
>>Didn't you propose that potty-training was the "drosophillia" (a fruit fly,
>>right?) whose--I'm assuming--evolutionary history could tell us (something?)
>>about evolution [in an objective way, I assume]? If you have been following
>>this thread, might'nt "sewing" as I've defined it also work to reveal this
>>drosophile effect?
>Yes.
>Umm....
>Drosophila is the fruit fly, used as a basic and easily experimentable on
>by geneticists. I proposed that toilet training could be used in a like
>way (by memeticists) to identify memes- cultural quanta- since toilet
>training is uniquely human and uniquely cultural, and universal.
>I'm currently working on suggesting a new form of dream study as another
>approach.
>Sewing, i.e. the making of garments- is another good idea. Again, we need
>to see in what manner this differentiates from animal pursuits of
>individual protection from the elements, and try to distill some things.
>
>These are all ways I see we can actually identify memes- basic units of
>culture. But I am not a scientist....
> Wade T. Smith
Returning,
rBERTS%n
Rabble Sonnet Retort
He talked with more claret than clarity.
Susan Ertz