Origin of the Name

 

 

"What's in a name?  That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet..."

William Shakespeare

 

 

  

The word ideologie, "the science of ideas", was coined by the French philosopher CountAntoine Destutt de Tracy in the late 18th century.  Thomas Jefferson was counted as one of his many admirers.  It was only after he fell out of favor with Napoleon Bonaparte (he called his anti-monarchical and pro-democratic views the work of an "ideologue") that the word succumbed to the neutral-to-negative connotation it holds today.

 

Two hundred years later,  the possibility of a real science of ideas is emerging:  one which could aid in the integration of all cooperative and competitive ideologies existing throughout human consciousness.  And what better name could be used to identify a new class of distributed collaborative methodologies?  By slightly shortening its native-language spelling to emphasize the underlying recursive symmetry of this phenomenon it would represent, the name (and registered trademark) of ideologi was born .