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Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life (1995) is a controversial book by Daniel Dennett which argues that Darwinian processes are the central organising force in the Universe. Dennet asserts that natural selection is a blind and algorithmic process which is sufficiently powerful to account for everything from the laws of physics and the creation of the Universe through the generation and evolution of life to the ins and outs of human minds and societies. These assertions have generated a great deal of debate and discussion within the scientific community.
Main Ideas
Universal Acid
Dennett regards Darwinism as a "universal acid" that eats through virtually all traditional beliefs. Dennett describes natural selection as a substrate neutral and mindless algorithm for moving through "Design Space".
"Skyhook"
Dennett used the term "skyhook" to describe a source of design complexity that did not build on lower, simpler layers - in simple terms, a miracle.
In philosophical arguments concerning the reducibility (or otherwise) of the human mind, Dennett's concept pokes fun at the idea of intelligent design emanating from on high, either originating from God, or providing its own grounds in an absurd, Münchausen-like bootstrapping manner.
Dennett also accuses various competing neo-Darwinian ideas of making use of such supposedly unscientific skyhooks in explaining evolution, coming down particularly hard on the ideas of Stephen Jay Gould.
Dennett contrasts theories of complexity which require such miracles with those based on "cranes", structures which permit the construction of entities of greater complexity but which are themselves founded solidly "on the ground" of physical science.
Biology as Engineering
Memes, Culture, and Morality
Controversies
References
See also
External links
- Book review in the Journal of Scientific Exploration.
- Gould's response to Dennett's "neo-Darwinian orthodoxy" from the New York Review of Books, June 26, 1997.
- Dennet's response to criticism.