An idea is a mental construct, a thought about something. In my Idea of Ideas framework, an idea forms when the mind performs a cognitive operation on an impression or connects two impressions. For example, hearing a rustling sound is an impression. Recognizing it as danger is an idea. This distinction reaches back into our evolutionary past, before language and reflective thought.
Ideas come in many forms. A single word can represent an idea, while vocabulary gives us a collection of ideas. Philosophy tends to focus on questions, statements, and claims, but a story is also an idea. So is a theory. Some ideas are grouped into interesting categories like paradoxes and counterfactuals. Some ideas are simple, like recognizing something as food. Others combine ideas into something complex, like the theory of evolution.
In 1976, Richard Dawkins introduced the term meme in The Selfish Gene. A meme is a type of idea, a unit of cultural transmission. It’s something that spreads from one mind to another through experience. Examples include melodies, catchphrases, and beliefs. Dawkins suggested memes impact biological evolution. Not straight inheritance, more complicated, and debated, but an important idea of the 1970s. Philosopher Daniel Dennett later connected this discussion to the Baldwin effect, first proposed in 1896: it’s the idea that learned behaviors can influence natural selection, favoring inherited traits that favor memes. In other words, from the genetic side, nature can favor inherited traits based on learned behavior! Learning doesn’t rewrite genes, but learning can help determine which genes succeed.
Within the Idea of Ideas, Dawkins’s memes fit naturally alongside other types of ideas. Nothing about Dawkins’s concept conflicts with the Idea of Ideas. In fact, it adds another useful dimension: how ideas spread and evolve through societies.