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Darwin's Dangerous Idea

Author	Daniel C. Dennett
Subject(s)	Evolution, ethics
Genre(s)	Science, philosophy
Publisher	Simon & Schuster
Publication date	1995
Pages	586
ISBN	ISBN 0-670-03186-0
Preceded by	Consciousness Explained
Followed by	Kinds of Minds: Toward an Understanding of Consciousness

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. Dennett 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^{[citation needed]} 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.

Contents 1 Central concepts 1.1 Universal acid 1.2 Skyhooks and cranes 2 Reception 3 References 4 External links

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".

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.

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In the New York Review of Books, Stephen Jay Gould criticised Darwin's Dangerous Idea for being an "Influential but misguided ultra-Darwinian manifesto".

"Daniel Dennett devotes the longest chapter in Darwin's Dangerous Idea to an excoriating caricature of my ideas, all in order to bolster his defense of Darwinian fundamentalism. If an argued case can be discerned at all amid the slurs and sneers, it would have to be described as an effort to claim that I have, thanks to some literary skill, tried to raise a few piddling, insignificant, and basically conventional ideas to "revolutionary" status, challenging what he takes to be the true Darwinian scripture. Since Dennett shows so little understanding of evolutionary theory beyond natural selection, his critique of my work amounts to little more than sniping at false targets of his own construction. He never deals with my ideas as such, but proceeds by hint, innuendo, false attribution, and error."^[1]

Gould was also a harsh criticizer of Dennett's idea of the "universal acid" of natural selection and of his subscription to the idea of memetics:

"The fallacy of Dennett's argument also undermines his other imperialist hope--that the universal acid of natural selection might reduce human cultural change to the Darwinian algorithm as well. Dennett, following Dawkins once again, tries to identify human thoughts and actions as "memes," thus viewing them as units that are subject to a form of selection analogous to natural selection of genes. Cultural change, working by memetic selection, then becomes as algorithmic as biological change operating by natural selection on genes--thus uniting the evolution of organisms and thoughts under a single ultra-Darwinian rubric. Natural selection does not enjoy this necessary substrate neutrality. As the great evolutionist R.A. Fisher showed many years ago in the founding document of modern Darwinism (The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection, 1930), natural selection requires Mendelian inheritance to be effective. Genetic evolution works upon such a substrate and can therefore be Darwinian. Cultural (or memetic) change manifestly operates on the radically different substrate of Lamarckian inheritance, or the passage of acquired characters to subsequent generations. Whatever we invent in our lifetimes, we can pass on to our children by our writing and teaching. Evolutionists have long understood that Darwinism cannot operate effectively in systems of Lamarckian inheritance--for Lamarckian change has such a clear direction, and permits evolution to proceed so rapidly, that the much slower process of natural selection shrinks to insignificance before the Lamarckian juggernaut."^[1]

Dennett's response and an exchange between Daniel Dennett, Stephen Jay Gould, and Robert Wright can be found on here.^[2]

Biologist H. Allen Orr wrote a scathing review emphasizing similar points in the Boston Review, ^[3] to which Dennett later responded. ^[4]

1. ^ ^{a b} http://cogweb.ucla.edu/Debate/Gould.html
2. ^ http://www.stephenjaygould.org/reviews/dennett_exchange.html
3. ^ http://bostonreview.net/BR21.3/Orr.html
4. ^ http://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/papers/orr.htm

Dennett, Daniel (1995), Darwin's Dangerous Idea, Simon & Schuster, ISBN 0-684-82471-X.

• 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.
• Dennett's response to criticism.

v • d • e Daniel Dennett
Concepts	Greedy reductionism · Heterophenomenology · Intentional stance · Intuition pump · Multiple Drafts Model
Selected works	Brainstorms · The Mind's I · Elbow Room · Consciousness Explained · Darwin's Dangerous Idea · Freedom Evolves · Breaking the Spell