A review by lennyankireddi
Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life by Daniel C. Dennett
4.0
This lengthy and thought-provoking book by Dan Dennett is more a treatise on Darwinian thought than a commentary on the Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection. It highlights and discusses the many offshoots of thought relating to reductionism, utilitarianism, Kantism and many other lines of philosophical rumination when considered in the light of Darwinian principles of the evolution of living organisms, the algorithmic nature of the existence of such and the anatomical and behavioral traits they possess and display. This commentary on the interpretations over time by many celebrated and infamous luminaries of the fields of philosophy, biology - evolutionary and sociobiology and other thought leaders includes the reflections of Darwin himself and dwells on the fallacies and incongruencies of thought committed by the experts, that resulted from either limited or incomplete knowledge or the inability to logically and consistently articulate the meaning of Darwinian existence and its implications on human existence.
Dennett is clearly an adherent to the ideas formulated by Richard Dawkins in "The Selfish Gene" and to those that have read Dawkins' work and tend to understand and agree with his take on the prime replicator and therefore, the prime benefactor of utility, it is not hard to see the philosophical scaffolding that Dennett builds around these ideas to support his arguments. Dennett spends a considerable amount of page real estate identifying why Darwin's idea is considered so dangerous by so many who are wedded to a traditionalist or exceptionalist interpretation of the meaning of human life and how it stands apart from the meaning of other forms of life. In doing so, he focuses special energy in lambasting Stephen Jay Gould for his insistence on factors other than natural selection leading to selection and goes into many examples why Gould's instances for what he, Gould, presented as new and revolutionary ways of understanding evolution, in reality, fit very well into the well known picture of natural selection as supported by John Maynard Smith.
The text gets a little circumloquacious in places and there is a constant reference to sky-hooks and cranes that if you didn't really get the analogy for the first time it is introduced in the book, you may find hard to fit into the picture in the scores of other places where they are mentioned. There is also the usual philosophical abstraction of thought in many places that is hard for someone who deals more in concrete ideas to follow. However, the book is a prolific provider of fodder for thought and presents many ideas that one may have considered before but not in a certain way that would yield different results or confuse them more. Overall, a long and arduous but decent read.
Dennett is clearly an adherent to the ideas formulated by Richard Dawkins in "The Selfish Gene" and to those that have read Dawkins' work and tend to understand and agree with his take on the prime replicator and therefore, the prime benefactor of utility, it is not hard to see the philosophical scaffolding that Dennett builds around these ideas to support his arguments. Dennett spends a considerable amount of page real estate identifying why Darwin's idea is considered so dangerous by so many who are wedded to a traditionalist or exceptionalist interpretation of the meaning of human life and how it stands apart from the meaning of other forms of life. In doing so, he focuses special energy in lambasting Stephen Jay Gould for his insistence on factors other than natural selection leading to selection and goes into many examples why Gould's instances for what he, Gould, presented as new and revolutionary ways of understanding evolution, in reality, fit very well into the well known picture of natural selection as supported by John Maynard Smith.
The text gets a little circumloquacious in places and there is a constant reference to sky-hooks and cranes that if you didn't really get the analogy for the first time it is introduced in the book, you may find hard to fit into the picture in the scores of other places where they are mentioned. There is also the usual philosophical abstraction of thought in many places that is hard for someone who deals more in concrete ideas to follow. However, the book is a prolific provider of fodder for thought and presents many ideas that one may have considered before but not in a certain way that would yield different results or confuse them more. Overall, a long and arduous but decent read.