[Sorry, that's not a smiley with an abnormally square jawline, it's a... oh
Jesus, I can't be arsed with this.] Voici le quote de Richard Dawkins...
>Is Science a Virus
>
>No. Not unless all computer programs are viruses. Good, useful programs
>spread because people evaluate them, recommend them and pass them on.
>Computer viruses spread solely because they embody the coded instructions:
>``Spread me.'' Scientific ideas, like all memes, are subject to a kind of
>natural selection, and this might look superficially virus-like. But the
>selective forces that scrutinize scientific ideas are not arbitrary and
>capricious. They are exacting, well-honed rules, and they do not favor
>pointless self-serving behavior. They favor all the virtues laid out in
>textbooks of standard methodology: testability, evidential support,
>precision, quantifiability, consistency, intersubjectivity, repeatability,
>universality, progressiveness, independence of cultural milieu, and so on.
>Faith spreads despite a total lack of every single one of these virtues.
It's at the end of a paper aimed at slagging off unproven religious faith.
But... comments please! My personal view is that although scientific method
looks like it's rule-based, there's no scientists that follow the rules
100%, and I mean 0.0000001% more than 99.9999999%.
And anyway, scientific method is a meme-complex, isn't it? An emergent
ecological grouping of co-evolved memes?
I... erm... just wondered, cos I don't particularly like the idea of arguing
with a geezer who'll take on the Catholic Church and Islam in meme-scrsame time.
Youse can all check out the paper linked from
http://www.spacelab.net/~catalj/home.html
Looking under the link for "papers by Dawkins" or something, though I'm sure
it's linked from David MacFad's pages, or Principia Cybernetica...
Dave Pape
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Ran out of sig. ideas.
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