OUTLINE

In 1976 Richard Dawkins launched the concept 'meme' in 'The Selfish Gene'. This concept features in a view on social evolution, directly analogous to genetic evolution. In biological evolution, genes are replicators floating around in a genepool. In the same way memes can be seen as replicators in 'memetic' human evolution, floating around in a memepool (chapter 11). Dawkins gives examples of memes such as 'catch-phrases, tunes, ideas, clothes, fashions, and ways of makings pots or of building arches'. In 'viruses of the mind' ( 1993a ) he stated another example:

Less portentously, and again especially prominent in children, the 'craze' is a striking example of behavior that owes more to epidemiology than to rational choice. Yo-yos, hula hoops and pogo sticks, with their associated behavioral fixed actions, sweep through schools, and more sporadically leap from school to school, in patterns that differ from a measles epidemic in no serious particular. Ten years ago, you could have travelled thousands of miles through the United States and never seen a baseball cap turned back to front. Today, the reverse baseball cap is ubiquitous. I do not know what the pattern of geographical spread of the reverse baseball cap precisely was, but epidemiology is certainly among the professions primarily qualified to study it.

The appealing thing about this view of memes, the study of which I shall call memetics, is that it can describe the spread of such cultural units such as ideas, fashions, etc., in a society, group of people etc. The society then somehow refers to a memepool, and the ideas, fashions etc. to memes. Since the spread of fashions, songs, ideas and opinions is so recognizable in many aspects of everyday life, I find it relevant to achieve a systematic scientific view that can address these phenomena. Furthermore, because there are several other scientific approaches that address the spread of ideas, opinions and fashions in science, policy processes and the media this endeavour has theoretical potential.