Thread: The sun
View Single Post
Old 03-03-2006, 01:22 PM   #14
whoneedscience
Guest
 
Posts: n/a
Quote:
ProveIt wrote
Try to stay in the lines... You are painting far to broad of strokes to have meaningful conversation. In order to address all points you are attempting to cover you may need to write pages... and my attention span simply can't take it. There are too many half thoughts and incompletes for me to even begin picking apart this post. Bottom line, there is not a need to compare apples to bananas. Both biological evolution and cultural evolution may have their place. I don't think that that was up for debate really. But both are subcategories of evolution and study completely different things. It's along the same lines of saying that a pie graph of atheist vrs theists would be just as effective as atheists vrs those who believe in Christ - merely because they are both on a pie chart. (Probably not the best reference I could come up with... but really, I'm not trying all that hard if you're not going to.)

Cultural evolution does not do the same job that biological evolution does. They may be drastically similar... but not the same. Am I wrong? Certainly cultural evolution could not be considered more effective... as it is based off of biological, no? Would biological not trump cultural?
"Cultural evolution" is perhaps better known as Memeology, for one. There's no need to attack the guy for relating to a fairly well accepted theory. Second, you need to define "trump" if you're going to use it where it doesn't really apply. Memes replicate, mutate and are selected for much faster than genes in human populations. Evolutionary theory describes the situation very effectively, as you suggest, but to rank one above the other in a purely quantitative way is irrational. Natural Selection was first applied to genes, but the theory itself applies to anything that reproduces differentially and competes for limited resources. You can look at it as memes reproduce in biological machines, and are thus second-level, or you could say that memes work much faster and might have a more significant impact on our lives (in the form of technology, etc.). Applying a kind of ostensible betterness quality to them is not valid.
  Reply With Quote