'Tricky.'
'But can you do it?'
'No- but I can tell you who can....'
Yup, wish I could. But it would be, I think, an electrochemical event, at
a specific receptor or transmitter on a cell surface, in a specific and
repeatable area of the brain, and able to be created in that area
experimentally with a set of stimuli in a laboratory setting.
In other words, it _will_ be findable. (I think....) And it will be
unique to the brain and nervous system of homo sapiens sapiens, and it
will be connected in a necessary and sufficient way to the means and
processes of language.
And, please note that I very certainly separate what 'memetics' is _at
the moment_ from what it might become once this unit is fully defined and
discovered. (If it ever is.) And- I do not discount the discoveries on
either side _as long as they are working towards each other_. This is the
lesson of 'Consilience' which I most take to heart.
So, I would say that those who want to use the distribution of ideas as a
signpost to the minds receptive to whatever these things are, should
examine carefully determined mutations of a very small set of
ideas/behaviors, which is why I mentioned jumping-rope songs over nursery
rhymes, and why I would like to see controlled experiments producing
finite data sets, and not extrapolations or meta-analyses of previously
gathered data.
But, for your answer, I cannot. But that is my best guess about where and
how to look.
*****************
Wade T. Smith
morbius@channel1.com | "There ain't nothin' you
wade_smith@harvard.edu | shouldn't do to a god."
******* http://www.channel1.com/users/morbius/ *******