Abstract

Dawkins’ concept of the meme pool, essentially equivalent to Popper’s World 3, is considered as an expression in modern terms for what Averroes knew as the ‘active intellect’, an immortal entity feeding into, or even creating, the ‘passive intellect’ of consciousness. A means is thus provided for reconciling a materialist Darwinian view of the universe with a conception of non-personal immortality. The meme pool/active intellect correspondence provides a strong basis for regarding science as a communal enterprise producing enrichment of the meme pool and expansion of consciousness, and emphasizes the virtues of memetic conservation in relation to vanishing cultures.