To come back at the evolution of ideas. One of the mechanisms that appears to be an important factor in the survival of ideas is that new ideas use ‘old ones’. By a very strong mechanism called ‘metaphor’ old ideas get new meaning in a metaphorical transformation. Because of this process ‘old ideas’ can pop up in a new form. A very powerful idea for instance is the ‘end of times’ and especially ‘the big flood’. This is a sort of archetypical idea that is very powerful. These are stories that stick. Would it be coincidence that after we had the big fire as our ‘end of times’ (during the cold war) now the flood is the next scenario?
Another powerful idea is ‘the great chain of being‘. This view that can be traced down from the ancient times, describes our universe as a sort of big ladder of phenomena or beings from a very simple, earthly form towards more complicated, complex and – in the end – celestial forms (such as angels and ultimately God). The ‘lowest’ parts are minerals, further on the more humble beings, worms, insects, towards animals, human beings, angels, gods. The human race is placed in the middle, just between the more mundane and the more transcendent. Lovejoy (The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea, (1936)) wrote a tremendous book following the idea from the ancient greek towards the modern biology from Darwin. I utterly enjoyed reading it, in the early 80ies. In this book the evolution of this idea is described in detail.
Maybe this could be an important factor of ’sticking power’: any idea that is more resonant with some other, archetypical ideas is more easy to pick up. Maybe this is why the evolution – as an unintentional, non goal seeking, non idealistic process – is not (yet) very sticky in our common sense world, whereas the idea of ‘intelligent design’ that is very resonant with the idea of a ‘masterplan’ is very easy to stick.
Tags: archetype, evolution, Lovejoy, the great chain of being