X-Message-Number: 5340
Date: Mon, 4 Dec 1995 20:59:40 -0800
From: John K Clark <>
Subject: SCI.CRYONICS Memes

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In #5327  Peter Merel <> On Mon, 4 Dec 1995 Wrote:



                >[Criticizing Dawkins theory of memes]  One might say, in the
                
                >same vein, that cars have no higher purpose than to
                
                >perpetuate the survival of the internal combustion engine,
                
                >or that computers have no higher purpose than to perpetuate
                                >the survival of bits. 
                   
I don't think such things have a "higher purpose" or a purpose at all in 
an absolute sense, only relative purpose. The purpose of a violin for me may  
be to make music, for you it may be as a fly swatter to squash a bug.

Cars and even present day computers are poor analogies for DNA. Evolution 
doesn't work very well, but it's important because before the days when 
matter could act in intelligent ways (matter like us) it was the only way 
complex structures could get built. DNA can reproduce itself without the aid 
of intelligence, cars and up to this point computers, can not. One thing is 
absolutely essential for Evolution to work, and that is a reproduction 
system.



                >The furphy here is that life, cars or computers have any
                
                >innate purpose - imho such  teleological rubbish doesn't
                                >belong in a magazine that describes itself as "scientific".  
                
Dawkins sometimes usees anthropomorphic terms, I do to, and will continue 
to do so, because it's a useful shorthand. It is not, of course, mente to be 
taken literally. "Purpose" in this context means, what something does, how it 
got to be the way it is, and most important of all, what is being maximized. 
It's  easier to just use the word "purpose". I'm surprised I have to explain 
this to you. Be honest, did you REALLY think that Richard Dawkins, of all 
people, the same man who  wrote " The Selfish Gene " and " The Extended 
Phenotype", was a believer in teleology and assigned purpose to evolution?! 
                           

                >manifest destiny is bunk too. 

Huh? Manifest destiny? I didn't see anything about destiny, manifest or 
otherwise.                   


                >We're entering an era of evolution-by-design.  
                         
Revolution-by-design would be a better term. Certainly it will have little   
to do with conventional Darwinian evolution with it's random mutation and
natural selection. Lamarckism, that is, evolution by the inheritance of  
acquired characteristics, will play an important part however, it's already 
the powerhouse behind cultural evolution.



                                           John K Clark       
                                           
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