Hi Platt (Peter) and all,
PLATT
>Well, that memetics is considered a "discipline" is news to me. A
>couple of books (Richard Dawkins, Susan Blackmore) does not a
>discipline make, any more than two seminal books by Pirsig
>makes him accepted in academe.
Following Kenneth's reference I checked out the following:
Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit/about.html
It's a real academic, peer-reviewed journal up and running since 1997.
>To claim that memetics holds the same scientific standing as
>genetics is a real stretch. Among the scoffers of memetic theory
>are such heavyweights as Stephen Jay Gould, Harvard professor
>of zoology, and Robert Aunger, Cambridge anthropologist. Not that
>they are necessarily the last word, but they do indicate that doubts
>about memetics are not frivolous.
There are a lot of very marginal fields that make it into academia. Not
all reach the credibility of fields like genetics, but having a proper
journal is a good start. I am not familiar with SJG's specific criticism
of memetics, but I would imagine that he regards it as too woolly. Of
course, until biology became a molecular science in the 1950's, it was
held in similar disdain by physicisists and chemists. I'm not out to
defend memetics, just to say that by all appearances, it has the
hallmarks of a nascent academic field.
It's interesting that because of the vagueness of the term "Memetics",
they decided to add "Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission" to
the journal title. Now Information Theory *IS* regarded as a hard field,
and has linked up very strongly with genetics. That's certainly the main
reason why Memetics started up in the first place.
IMO, Petter Lennox is right that it's ALL information.
Jonathan
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