Re: virus: Memohazard (?) Symbol

Wade T.Smith (wade_smith@harvard.edu)
Mon, 24 Mar 97 22:40:56 -0500


>Nonsense. I can't show you a gene either, but I can make mathematical
>models of them, and point to their effects. I can point to the very
>real effects of memes too: languages, foods, lifestyles. I could
>chart the spread of a meme like, say, use of lemon grass in cooking,
>exactly the way I might trace the spread of a pathogen. The science is
>young, so there is little objective raw data, but it will come.

Nonsense doubled is twice nonsense. Genes are very real _physical_
things, which can be measured, and seen, using instrumentation. Memes are
not. I am glad you can sculpt this fog, but you are mistaken if anyone
else can... Not even Dawkins has canned the things yet....

The science is more than young, it is still unborn. It may well be an
ecology of the cognitive sciences, a cross-discipline, but it is still in
conceptual stage, possibly still in courtship....

I am not discounting any worth here, but 'memetics is a science' is a
false statement. And so, as far as we can determine, is 'a meme is a real
thing.' It is still, and please correct me if I am mistaken, a
_descriptor_ of a cognitive process. It is a valid, IMHO, term, but
hardly a thing measurable, (or chartable- what cheek....)

*****************
Wade T. Smith
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wade_smith@harvard.edu | shouldn't do to a god."
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