Macromemetics

This article reviews the divided state of Western Philosophy, and points out certain areas in which the Continental and Anglo-American schools may be reconciled by the use of a memetic approach. Firstly, the similarities between Popper’s hierarchical dissection of his World 3 concept and the hierarchical nature of the gene/meme analogy are discussed. Special attention is paid to the lowest level, that of fundamental propositions or memetic `nucleotides‘, and the highest level, that of the meme pool. The study of meme pool evolution is compared with the cultural evolutionary school of social anthropology. Additionally, incipient memetical ideas are detected and examined in the work of Peirce, Saussure, Wittgenstein, Toynbee, Foucault and Derrida. The principal conclusion is that wherever philosophy is concerned with informational entities, a memetical approach may be applied. Both the cultural subject matter of Continental philosophy and the logical and linguistic concerns of the Anglo-American tradition can be re-expressed memetically. Memetics thus provides some possible common ground for the reunification of the two traditions.