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Re: 'cultural evolution'
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· · · · · · A E C F O R U M - "M E M E S I S" · · · · ·
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The following is a wonderfully evokative text, on which I would like to
make one coment:
Ideas of Genes and Memes and what they might mean in varying walks of
life are very interesting but making scientific based knowledge the ground
up on which art grows is treating art as pseudo-science. We seem to live
in an age when things have to be justified either as being scientific,
possible scientific, virtual scientific, scientifically based or as *non*
scientific. Every phenomena is seen as require a physical seed.
That prevailing approach is sad specially comming from artists. Since the
development of quantom theory, science has, unconsciously, shifted itself
into the domains of art. The idea that the set up of an experiment will
determain its result is fundamentally artistic. Scientific experiments
are no longer 'true' or 'false' - but sets of performance art. Modern
hunting rituals where the food is knowledge. But viewing that as science
makes scientific practice pseudo-art.
Art is where science (and any other human practice) both starts and meets
it's destiny. A society that perceives science as divorsed, above, the
lives of its peoples, restricts science and damages people's lives on
every possible level. (Check out resent scientific 'whoops we are sorry,
how could we have known' stories. and cultural alianzation....)
aharon
a.amir@bton.ac.uk
On Wed, 8 May 1996, Andreas Broeckmann wrote:
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> · · · · · · A E C F O R U M - "M E M E S I S" · · · · ·
> · · · · · · · (http://www.aec.at/meme/symp/) · · · · · ·
> ---------------------------------------------------------
> Dear memologists,
>
> An unease that critics of the equation between scientific and cultural
> systems have had since the nineteenth century is that scientists are always
> very quick to suggest practical applications. Remember the racio-cultural
> paradigm of physical anthropology that extrapolated cultural
> difference=superiority/inferiority from biological difference; I disagree
> with suggestions that there is a direct line from here into the gaschambers
> in Birkenau, but they are connected to the Eugenics programme which Francis
> Galton promoted and which implied the 'discouragement of marriages among
> members of the inferior racial stock', etc.
>
> Francis Heylighen writes:
> >A much more important phenomenon is the effect *cultural* evolution will
> >have. Indirectly, cultural evolution may even control genetic evolution. We
> >already see the first applications of biotechnology to the "repair" of
> >genes repsonsible for inherited diseases. Perhaps, the "Memesis" statement
> >should be understood in that sense: that humanity itself will develop the
> >power and the will to manipulate its own genes, throwing out those that are
> >not adapted to the new cultural-technological landscape. Still, the
> >statement is way too categoric.
>
> It is irritating that within these scientific discourses, description and
> the desire to control always seem to go together. Like modern genetics, the
> notion of 'memetics' therefore immediately suggests a cybernetics of
> culture (i.e. another science of control.
>
> Why do we have to think memes as something that is based on the digital
> code? Why not think them as polymorphous, disturbing, deterritorialising
> entities that produce meaning through difference, through transformation?
> Paralleling the notion of genes and memes suggests that there is a fixed
> and inscribed code which gets replicated in fertile environments. Why do we
> have to think memes as subject to forces of similarity?
>
> In February at the Videofest in Berlin, I did not give the paper about "The
> End of the Digital Age" which I had prepared. It seemed inappropriate for
> the occasion. Here is the abstract:
>
> The text cheerfully suggests that the digital age has come to an end and
> that we are about to enter the 'memetic age'. The reductive ideology of the
> binary code that ruled the digital age has been superseded by a first
> glimps of polymorphous, heterogeneous singularities called 'memes'. The
> author criticises the digi-biologistic notion of memes which equates them
> to pseudo-genes carrying and spreading the contents of human culture.
> Rather, he suggests that memes exist as singular forces on a stratum
> separate from the current human-digital biotope, and that humans should
> learn how to parasitically benefit from the heterogenic energy produced in
> the transient event of molecular-memetic materialisations. The text
> concludes with a suggestion for an 'aesthetics of the heterogeneity'
> according to which artists should strive for the development of disruptive,
> counter-intuitive interfaces.
>
> Greetings from sunny Rotterdam in May,
>
> Andreas Broeckmann
>
>
> ............................................................................
> ..........................................................
> V2_Organisatie * Andreas Broeckmann * abroeck@v2.nl
> Eendrachtsstr.10 * NL-3012XL Rotterdam * t.+31.10.4046427 * fx.4128562
> <http://www.v2.nl> <http://www.dds.nl/n5m> <http://www.v2.nl/east>
>
>
>
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