Macromemetics:Towards a framework for the re-unification of philosophy

Abstract

The review of the philosophical and scientific antecedents of memetics by Elan Moritz [27] is extended to cover 20th century philosophy. It is proposed that 'macromemetics', ie. the study of the evolution of entire meme pools, is in many respects a similar enterprise to that attempted by the cultural evolutionist school of anthropology which flourished in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Memetics may provide a new, and more rigorously Darwinian, slant to this rather neglected branch of anthropology. Furthermore, it is proposed that much of the terminology and conceptual apparatus of memetics may be reconciled with that used by recent Continental philosophers in their studies of culture, thus suggesting a possible Darwinian framework for the re-unification of Western philosophy.

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