Has the manifestation of ideas been explored before?

Question

I'm trying to figure out whether the manifestation of ideas has been explored before. It's similar to Richard Dawkin's concept of memes, but I'm not quite sure if it is the same.

Suppose an individual has an idea pop into their mind. This can be considered the idea manifesting itself to an individual.

Then the individual writes it down in a book. The idea has manifested itself in the book.

The book convinces hundreds of people of the idea. The idea manifested itself to all of those people.

Suppose that the idea is about how the legal system should be. The idea manifests itself by being instantiated in law and permanently impacting society.

Alternatively, the idea is about going to war with another nation. The idea manifests itself as a war and also manifests itself as a permanent influence on the history of nations.

It seems to me that ideas can perform actions on the world by manifesting themselves. What would this be called? Has it been explored before?

Answer 1

The majority of mathematicians consider math to be a real thing, discovered, not created. Most ethics thinking holds that morality is a real thing, as all objective morality presupposes its existence. These are the two most common examples of the application of abstract object realism to a subject.

Quine agrees that abstract object realism is as fully inferred from the utility of abstract objects, as physical reality is inferred by the same method.

The most extensive thinking I have seen on the nature of abstract objects is by Karl Popper, who proposed that our universe has three types of things in it: matter, experience, and ideas. He proposed that these are three different worlds, world 1 which is physical, world 2 which is consciousness, and world 3 which is ideas. Frege was the first proposer of these three worlds, and Popper elaborated on them.

Popper's model of the interaction of ideas with matter, was that consciousness was the intermediary. The ability of a conscious entity to hypothesize what might happen provides a material entity the ability to experiment in a theory space that is less damaging to its life. Consciousness would then serve a materiel entity, and allow a material entity to benefit from world 3 ideas.

Meme theory takes world 3 even more seriously, and assumes that world 3 memes control the world 2 consciousness, and from there, the world 1 entities that hold consciousness. The idea of Libertie, Fraternitie, Equalitie, for example, spawned a series of revolutions and wars, and lead to the democratization of Europe.

Answer 2

This is very close to Dawkins' notion, except that he assumes this layer and theorizes that the manifesting ideas are like reproducing creatures, and that they may therefore have constituent parts corresponding to the genes that determine physical creatures. Those 'elementary sub-ideas' are the memes.

Daniel Dennett buys into the theory of memes, and is trying to build [a philosophically sound approach that includes it][1].

He is a hard-core materialist, so he often prefers to frame this in terms of sub-cultures and cultural evolution, talking about ideas 'being introduced' and 'transferring among groups'. But this is the same mechanism as your manifestation or Platonic 'participation' with the shared mind, but from a behaviorist POV.

Answer 3

The Vedas contain fragments of an ancient science of consciousness that, once recognized, elucidated and couched in modern language, are very similar to answers given above.

An attempt to describe it must use modern terms that are, at best, rough approximations to the concepts. Simplistically put, Vedic ideas conceive of the Physical Realm in which ideas find material expression, and so can "bang against each other"; the Psychic Realm in which they are energy constructs that can encounter and merge, like aspects mutually strengthening and unlike aspects weakening, so that their interactions determine the strongest by what remains of the encounter; and the Spiritual Realm in which live a multitude of creative ... Logoi shall we say ... that avail themselves of these opportunities, first to use the Psychic Realm to determine the most robust ideas, and then to attempt material realization in a suitable environment, typically the biosphere of an amenable planet.

I doubt that any of this is known to Readers here, but it may be useful as a new path of exploration.