Category: general

We hate memes, pass it on…

Vaughn at Mind Hacks has a short post, Memes exist: tell your friends (clever, Vaughn, very clever), which links to a couple of meme-related talks at TED. Daniel linked to a lot of the TED talks back in April (TED: Ideas Worth Spreading), but Vaughn focuses on videos of Daniel Dennett and Susan Blackmore, both of whom are ardent meme advocates.

I’ve watched both talks, more than a half hour of my finite lifespan that I will never get back (okay, I’ve wasted part of my finite life doing worse… I think), so I need to unburden myself. I think ‘memetics’ is one of the bigger crocks hatched in recent decades, hiding in the shadow of respectable evolutionary theory, suggesting that anyone who doesn’t immediately concede to the ‘awesome-ness’ of meme-ness is somehow afraid of evolutionary theory. Let me just make this perfectly clear: I teach about evolutionary theory. I like Charles Darwin. I have casts of hominid skulls in my office. I still think ‘memetics’ is nonsense on stilts on skates on thin ice on borrowed time (apologies to Bentham), as deserving of the designation ‘science’ as astrology, phrenology, or economic forecasting.

What’s hard for me to understand is that I LIKE some of Daniel Dennett’s work, and I can’t cite Dennett’s other work confidently when he has picked up a ‘meme franchise,’ and is plugging away with the ‘meme’ meme, making it appear that I’m down with this later material. Blackmore, on the other hand, is a reformed para-psychologist, so she’s, at worst, made a lateral move in terms of respectability. I get particularly irritated during her talk because I think she does an enormous disservice to Darwin’s Origin of Species, but I will try not to late my irritation show too much (even though our regular readers know I won’t be able to manage). I wasn’t going to really heap scorn on Blackmore until I read her own account of TED on the Guardian’s website; gloves are now off.

But I digress, back to the content of the concept and Vaughn’s comments…

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The New York Neuroanthropology Times Today

A series of articles today in the New York Times nicely captures several of the themes of Neuroanthropology—(1) the importance of evolution, with an emphasis on comparative work, variation, and mechanism in addition to adaptive function; (2) examining the interaction between the environment and behavioral biology, where the environment can significantly shape and even alter basic behavioral biology; (3) that brains are there not just to process information or create accurate representations, but are designed for doing things; and (4) social context matters, shaping what people do and what they experience (again, brain-environment interaction), so a focus on the brain alone will not explain significant social patterns or problems.

Evolution and social context are both necessary to successful neuronanthropology, which in turn focuses on what people do and feel through the lens of person-environment interaction. Our approach avoids placing analysis into any one academic category (saying something is an anthropological or a neurological problem alone) and eschews the essentialism that most academic fields incorporate into their causal explanations (culture or biology or psychology made them do it). So here are the articles.

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Nicholas Wade reports on new research that shows that the evolution of brain complexity is related to synaptic structure, and not just to the number of neurons (the older “bigger brain” theory). The following graphic shows the sequence well.

Synapses had been viewed as a standard feature across animal brains. “In fact the synapses get considerably more complex going up the evolutionary scale, Dr. Grant and colleagues reported online Sunday in Nature Neuroscience. In worms and flies, the synapses mediate simple forms of learning, but in higher animals they are built from a much richer array of protein components and conduct complex learning and pattern recognition, Dr. Grant said… ‘From the evolutionary perspective, the big brains of vertebrates not only have more synapses and neurons, but each of these synapses is more powerful — vertebrates have big Internets with big computers and invertebrates have small Internets with small computers’.”

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More on the human ‘super-organism’

Intestine and gut microbeThere’s a good short piece, Humans Have Ten Times More Bacteria Than Human Cells: How Do Microbial Communities Affect Human Health?, in Science Daily, picks up on some of the themes we discussed in The human ’super-organism.’ The overwhelming majority of cells in human bodies belongs to microbes — the article says 10 bacteria cells for every human body cell (does it make you feel tired to think how much bacteria you’re carrying around?). Recognizing that we are a shambling micro-cosmos of oraganisms (or ‘microbiome’) suggests new understandings of all sorts of things, including disease. The Science Daily article points out that ‘changes in these microbial communities may be responsible for digestive disorders, skin diseases, gum disease and even obesity.’

There’s one passage in particular that I thought was worth posting, even if I don’t have too much to add:

“This could be the basis of a whole new way of looking at disease. In order to understand how changes in normal bacterial populations affect or are affected by disease we first have to establish what normal is or if normal even exists,” says Margaret McFall Ngai of the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

The microbiome research is particularly interesting to us at Neuroanthropology, even though it’s not strictly about the brain or nervous system, because it’s a particular compelling demonstration that the human body is a dynamic system; that is, the body is a system of different forces and processes, at a number of scales, that together continually produce the whole, sometimes in equilibrium and sometimes in ways that produce dysfunction.

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Four Stone Hearth #42

We at Neuroanthropology are very pleased to be hosting Four Stone Hearth #42, blog carnival of anthropology, especially at our new digs (neuroanthropology.net is now our domain… we like the sound of that, domain). The global anthro-scape has been positively buzzing with excitement: new discoveries, familiar voices, and a few outlandish claims can be worth acres of text in the virtual world. We didn’t get a lot of submissions because we think everyone’s too busy blogging (that, or on summer vacation, we mean, busy with fieldwork). So this is what we’ve come up with. So, go ahead and grab your marshmallows, put a sausage on a stick, and gather round close because the Four Stone Hearth is ready to start cooking.

Aardvarchaeology, genitor of the Four Stone Hearth, sounds like he’s pretty busy at a conference on the Orkney Islands, but he does leave us with a piece on medieval archaeology, gender symbolism, and tourist brick-a-brack rolled into a single post. A Swedish county museum prints Iron Age images on dish cloths and sells them in their shop in Sacred Imagery on Dish Rags. Perhaps the most intriguing ‘wrinkle’ in this story of sacred images on kitchen linens is that one of Martin’s colleagues, Howard Williams, came across a Gotlander cloth featuring a ‘snake-witch’ design from a picture stone in När, a symbol interpreted as being of an empowered women ritual specialists for many archaeologists interested in gender. That’s right, a snake-grasping, legs-spread symbol of female strength on a souvenir dish cloth (must. ignore. irony.). The post includes a rollicking discussion of different examples of offensive tourist archaeo-schlock that are so pervasive in gift shops and museum catalogs.

In addition, Martin posts a short piece, Skamby Gaming Pieces on Display, with a really lovely photo of 9th century amber gaming pieces that he helped to exhume that have gone on display at the County Museum in Linköping. If your carbon footprint isn’t big enough to get there, check out the original post he wrote about them here. Congratulations to Martin on getting the artifacts publicly displayed; they’re striking. And condolences if you actually get the haggis you were contemplating eating…

Remote Central has a short piece with good links on recent discoveries of the early traces of human incursions into the Americas, 44,000 Year-old Shell Heaps From Baja California and the Mystery of the 40,000 Year-old Footprints from Valsequillo, Mexico. With a title like this, who needs more summary?

Hot Cup of Joe brings us a discussion of the sunflower, Big Flower that Looks at Sun God. Remains of sunflowers has cast into doubt whether the plant was first domesticated in Mexico or eastern North America. Carl at HCJ points out the ritual dimensions of sunflower domestication and the likelihood that these played some part in its spread.

Mark Dingemanse, at The Ideophone, has a discussion of Joh. Bernard Schlegel’s assertion, published in 1857, that Ewe wasn’t a fully civilized language because it didn’t have enough adjectives (ironic, because the number of adjectives in a student essay is usually a reliable predictor of just how over-written it is…). Although Schlegel thought that the Bible would have the salutary effect of increasing Ewe adjectival creativity, a century and a half later, the Good Book still hasn’t led to the hoped-for linguistic proliferation. Check it out at Adjectives and the gospel in Ewe.

The extraordinarily prolific Anthropology.net , recently celebrating the one-year anniversary of its move to a new location (neuroanthropology feels your pain; we still can’t find our silverware…) has a great post on the panel, “What it means to be human,” held at this year’s World Science Festival in New York City. Turns out every speaker was wrong — don’t you hate when that happens?

Anthropology.net almost offers too many posts to choose from, so we’ll just highlight 4,000-year-old frozen hair mtDNA sequenced from a Greenlandic Saqqaq settlement (the title pretty much explains it). Turns out that Greenlanders are not closely related to Inuit, other Native Americans, or Europeans. And it also turns out that scholars who study Greenlanders produce very cool cladograms and map projections that pretty much march to their own drummer.

On Culture Matters, Stephen Cox has a short piece, Associated Press – shocked by the value of ethnography, on a recent presentation at the World Editors Forum in Goteborg, Sweden. According to Cox, the report has stirred up his co-workers as it found that, despite low expectations by Context-Based Research Group, the group that conducted the research, ethnography was ‘fun and transformative.’ We were left wondering what ‘context-based research’ was, if not ethnography?

Perhaps it’s hanging out and having some rum. Maximilian Forte at Open Anthropology gives us That’s Just Ole Rum Talk… Ah, field work in Trinidad, where the sweet ambivalent liquor runs from in de morning and then till I die, the names of two popular songs there.

And after fieldwork? How about a theory chaser! Rex at Savage Minds reconsiders the 1970’s through Said and Geertz; Erkan Saka reviews recent statements on culture by George Marcus, Michael Fischer, and Stuart Hall in Erkan’s Field Diary; and here at Neuroanthropology Maurice Bloch gave us the low-down on everyday, relevant anthropology.

Here at Neuroanthropology, we’ve been busy. We’ll just highlight a couple of posts. Daniel’s piece, New Humanities Initiative Proposal has been getting a ton of traffic. Anthropology seems so well poised to benefit from — and to strengthen — any attempt to reintegrate science and the humanities. And we’re also really pleased to have a new poster, Erin Finley, an anthropologist working with Iraq-war veterans, writing Cultural Aspects of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder: Thinking on Meaning and Risk. A hearty welcome, Erin, both to Neuroanthropology and to Four Stone Hearth!

Although it’s not strictly anthropological, we couldn’t resist Thadd at Archaeoporn’s great take-down of Dr. Frank’s Joint Relief for Dogs and Cats, in Discovery Channel, Selling Out. Seems that the cable channel is flogging this particular miracle in a bottle, and Thadd carefully analyzes the active ingredients in Dr. Frank’s brew, pointing out the improbability that toxic substances at staggeringly low doses (there’s lots of 0s involved) might have beneficial effects on your pet’s joints.

Finally, on the subject of why anthropologists blog, Lorenz at anthropologi.info brings us, Anthropology blogs more interesting than journals?, based on a class assignment by Owen Wiltshire. The post may be a bit older than our cut-off for FSH #42, but it’s a good read. As Wiltshire writes:

The anthropology blogsphere is a rapidly growing community that has created a new space for all levels of the anthropological hierarchy to express themselves. It has also opened doors to engagement with those outside anthropology.

And on that note, we’ll cut to a bit of a mash-up: dense speedlinking to a host of pages on a single anthro topic. Like speed-dating, only less humiliating… And, as always, please feel free to post comments!

Topical round-up

Since a number of topics have circulated around on a variety of anthro-blogs, we thought we might do a couple of paragraphs of ‘topical round-up,’ pointing to a number of places where particular news was being discussed:

A fascinating story on one of the more famous stone constructions around has been doing the rounds: BBC Stonehenge ‘royal cemetery’ claim and NYTimes Stonehenge Used as Cemetery From the Beginning, inspiring a host of commentary in the anthro-blogosphere: on Remote Central (the comments alone are worth the price of admission), on Early History News (with many links)… There’s even a compilation page on the beta version of Mahalo and a video on National Geographic (VIDEO: New View on Stonehenge Burials).

A number of photos were released by the Brazilian National Foundation of the Indian (FUNAI), passed through Survival International, and wound up with a startling variety of headlines: Isolated tribe spotted in Brazil (BBC), Leave Amazon tribe alone, Brazil says (ABC Australia), Photos Spur Debate On Protecting “Uncontacted” Tribes (Nat Geo), Amazon tribe sighting raises contact dilemma (Reuters)…

Anthrobloggers took on the issue of ‘uncontacted Indians’ at: John Hawks weblog, Culture Matters (where Greg wrote the piece), Savage Minds (with another posting) antropologi.info (which has a pile of links), Newspaper Rock (pointing out stereotypes of Native Americans)… Even Rush Limbaugh weighed in, offering the kind of incoherent rant that demonstrates why someone living isolated from ‘civilization’ might want to point an arrow at anyone who flew over.

There’s short references on many other sites, but feel free to send links to your own discussion through the comments command. That’s it for Four Stone Hearth #42 — last person to leave, kick some dirt over the embers…

British educational leader advocates The Matrix

The Telegraph yesterday ran with an article, Brain downloads ‘will make lessons pointless,’ about some comments made by Chris Parry, former Rear Admiral and the CEO of the Independent Schools Council. Parry believe that ‘”Matrix-style” technology would render traditional lessons obsolete,’ because we’ll soon be beaming knowledge into kids brains. Parry told the Times Educational Supplement: “It’s a very short route from wireless technology to actually getting the electrical connections in your brain to absorb that knowledge.”

Okay, you all need to help me: do I feel this under ‘hokum,’ ‘malarky,’ or ‘balderdash’? Rear Admiral Parry, sir, will the wireless technology use the brain’s Bluetooth or WiFi receptors? Which part of the brain’s RAM will you use when you install the new ‘human operating system’?

Okay, Admiral Parry, repeat after me: The brain is not a computer.

Continue reading “British educational leader advocates The Matrix”

New Humanities Initiative Proposal

Yesterday in The Battle between the Sciences and the Humanities I blogged about Natalie Angier’s NYT’s article on the interdisciplinary New Humanities Initiative being created by David Sloan Wilson and Leslie Heywood at Binghamton University. I contacted both of them about the article and the post, and also offered to put up their proposal here as the Initative does not yet have its own website. Sloan Wilson assured me that a website will be up soon as part of the EvoS site at Binghamton. But he also sent me the proposal and letter of support for our readers to look at.

So here is the proposal itself: new-humanities-proposal

And the letters of support for their NEH grant: new-humanities-letters

It is heartening to read in their opening:

It is important to emphasize that integrating the humanities and the sciences is not a matter of making the humanities more “scientific.” It is genuinely a two-way street, in which intellectual perspectives and subject areas currently associated with the humanities occupy center stage as part of the study of what it means to be human from a scientific perspective, and where the humanities are instrumental in articulating the transformative power of the imagination, a perspective that, for the first time in a very long time, is again taken seriously by science.

Still, as I wrote yesterday, I do think there need to be concrete projects and people in the middle to work the synthesis. I am all in favor of building an evolutionary approach that can reach across the table, as I’ve done that sort of work myself. Similarly, imagination and meaning can also reach out to science, as my research with drug abuse has shown me.

But the reaching out approach still leaves the synthesis on the table, and here is where I think endeavors like neuroanthropology can step in. Evolution and imagination meet in the everyday behaviors and sociocultural and neurological processes that shape how we live and what we experience.

So, in the end, I believe we need all three things. Two cultures that work better together, that have a more open orientation and theoretical stance to what creative people are doing “on the other side.” And then the specific work that Leslie Heywood discussed yesterday about wolves—a synthesis on a specific subject, with wolves and people and a real relationship with an actual wolf (well, seven eighths of one) there in the middle.

In any case, I wanted to get these documents out to people for their own perusal. I look forward to hearing what people think.

Also, by happy coincidence, today’s weekly round up fits perfectly with this initiative, with sections on neuroanthropological work, literary trends, language, and evolution. So please check it out!