----- Original Message -----
From: Vincent Campbell <v.p.campbell@stir.ac.uk>
To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
Sent: Wednesday, November 29, 2000 3:40 PM
Subject: RE: new article (another quick point)
> Typically, after posting my quick response earlier, I was struck by
another
> theory put forward that fits in with this kind of idea, and I'm suprised
the
> author didn't mention it.
>
> Agriculture is generally regarded to have been the catalyst for the
> emergence of cities, and it has been argued that the combination of
> agriculture and large dense urban populations led to requirements for
other
> things too, not least money, and also writing. For example, some 95% of
> writing found in ancient Sumer concerned trade.
>
> But this also turns the argument on its head in some ways. if if wasn't
for
> the discovery/ invention of farming, large scale communities of humans
were
> unlikely to develop. So qualitative factors can beget major population
> shifts, which in turn beget qualitative shifts in social trends. A while
> ago in New Scientist there was a piece about the discovery of fire-making
> that was speculating on these kinds of issues, i.e. how and to what extent
> did fire-making impact on human evolutionary development (in that case I
> think this was meant in genetic as well as social terms).
>
> BTW, nice to see fortunate coincidences of discussions on the list
appearing
> in press or on screen. I don't know if you caught, or what you thought
> about the Channel 4 programme 'The Difference', which focused on both
> genetic similarities and differences between ethnic groups, where the milk
> drinking tolerance was discussed. Also New Scientist a couple of weeks
> back mentioned that tribe in Papua New Guinea where they got the CJD like
> disease from eating dead relatives (it was in the news because several
> elderly survivors of that period, the 1950s, have begun to die from the
> disease, leading to fears that people previously thought immune to
> vulnerability to such diseases may just have very long incubation periods
> instead, so every meat eater in the UK is going to die from vCJD...
> perhaps).
>
> Also, has anyone else seen the Rose & Rose book 'Alas, Poor Darwin'? It's
> an attack on evolutionary psychology mostly, but there's a chapter called
> 'Anti-Dawkins', and Mary Midgely has written a piece about memes (flicking
> through it in the bookshop it didn't seem a strong argument to me against
> memes, but there you go I'm biased, although I did agree with some of the
> criticisms of Blackmore's Buddhism).
>
> Vincent
> > ----------
> > From: Gatherer, D. (Derek)
> > Reply To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
> > Sent: Wednesday, November 29, 2000 8:49 am
> > To: 'memetics@mmu.ac.uk'
> > Subject: new article
> >
> > The transition from quantity to quality: A neglected causal mechanism in
> > accounting for social evolution
> > Robert L. Carneiro
> > American Museum of Natural History, New York, NY 10024
> > Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, Vol. 97, Issue 23, 12926-12931, November 7,
> > 2000
> >
> > Students of social evolution are concerned not only with the general
> > course
> > it has followed, but also with the mechanisms that have brought it
about.
> > One such mechanism comes into play when the quantitative increase in
some
> > entity, usually population, reaching a certain threshold, gives rise to
a
> > qualitative change in the structure of a society. This mechanism, first
> > recognized by Hegel, was seized on by Marx and Engels. However, neither
> > they
> > nor their current followers among anthropologists have made much use of
it
> > in attempting to explain social evolution. But as this paper attempts to
> > show, in those few instances when the mechanism has been invoked, it has
> > heightened our understanding of the process of social evolution. And, it
> > is
> > argued, if the mechanism were more widely applied, further understanding
> > of
> > the course of evolution could be expected to result.
> >
> > Available at:
> >
> > http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/97/23/12926
> >
> > ===============================================================
> > This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
> > Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
> > For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
> > see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
> >
>
> ===============================================================
> This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
> Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
> For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
> see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
>
>
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