Abstrakt: | The so far abiding natural history paradigm has been expanded of yet. Nowadays,
its core constitutes information, whereas its investigation has led biological
sciences to neo-evolutionary solutions and theories under a common
label of the “third culture” . The book presents these changes, looking at their
consequences for the humanistic sciences. The author also formulates a thesis
and proves that a new culture theory, close to the diagnosis of the postmodernist
philosophy and sociology of culture (Baudrilliard, Foucault, Lyotard)
has been created within natural history, especially due to the theory of
Richard Dawkin’s selfish gene, and its extrapolation through memetics. The
theory rests on the conception of memo and evolution of the postgenetic information,
shaping an idiosphere, i.e. a stage of evolution in the Earth following
a biosphere. The author outlines her own memetics research programme, criticising
its achievements so far, and drawing conclusions from a comparison of
memetics with other theories of the “third culture” , especially with the chaos
theory. The assumptions of this very thoery, and a synthesis of culturological
investigations conducted in the area of the natural history discourses, has
led the author of the work to a narrativum hypothesis — an attractor of an
idiosphere’s universal phase space, a basin of attracting thoughts, speech and
ideas. Memetics, rebuilt according to the research proposal presented in the
book, reveals, at the same time, new research possibilities as an interdisciplinary
theory, as well as a potentially new methodology of humanistic sciences,
including narratology and media studies. The evidence of its efficiency
and usefulness in research on life and forms of ideas in an idiosphere belongs
to the near past which can totally change our understanding of culture. |