Memetics

Memetics is a discipline which espouses the concept of the meme, that is, a discrete unit of thought which propagates mind to mind in the same manner in which viruses jump from host organism to host organism. Although the general concept of a viral mental replicator had been proposed prior, Richard Dawkins coined the phrase in his 1976 book "The Selfish Gene":

We need a name for the new replicator, a noun that conveys the idea of a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation. `Mimeme' comes from a suitable Greek root, but I want a monosyllable that sounds a bit like `gene'. I hope my classicist friends will forgive me if I abbreviate mimeme to meme. If it is any consolation, it could alternatively be thought of as being related to `memory', or to the French word même. It should be pronounced to rhyme with `cream'.