At 10:44 PM 1/7/99 -0500, N CASHE wrote:
>to use that word!) ---I do think this could all apply somehow to the
Crazy, perhaps, but certainly not uninformed. :-) In fact pop music
was one of Dawkins's archetypical examples of a meme (catchy tunes)
in the text where he coined the word (The Selfish Gene), and again
in his most recent book (Unweaving the Rainbow). Other memeticists
have attempted to separate the expression of a meme from the meme
itself, like the expression of a gene (its phenotype) is distinct
from the gene itself (the genotype). If that is the case, then pop
music would be an expression of a set of memes.
>function of popular music (is there such a thing?). Does this sound as
>crazy or uninformed as I fear it might?
To date is in unclear whether the genotype/phenotype distinction can usefully be applied to memetics, whether it is good poetic science or bad poetic science (as Dawkins would say). Does the distinction illuminate or obscure the phenomenon?
-- David McFadzean david@lucifer.com Memetic Engineer http://www.lucifer.com/~david/ Church of Virus http://www.lucifer.com/virus/