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{{a|book review|}} | {{a|book review|}}{{br|Darwin’s Dangerous Idea}}<br> | ||
{{author|Daniel Dennett}} <br> | |||
{{br|Darwin’s Dangerous Idea}} | === Oolon Colluphid indahouse === | ||
This fascinating, difficult book has a simple premise: evolution describes a colossal series of individual, algorithmic steps, none of which is accompanied by any specific intention or intelligence. | This fascinating, difficult book has a simple premise: evolution describes a colossal series of individual, algorithmic steps, none of which is accompanied by any specific intention or intelligence. | ||
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As you progress through ''Darwin’s Dangerous Idea'', having unequivocally lost the ideas of God and a “soul”, a further order of things which are very central to civilisation as we know it start to collapse as well, most notably the ideas that there are external concepts of “right” and “wrong” at all. | As you progress through ''Darwin’s Dangerous Idea'', having unequivocally lost the ideas of God and a “soul”, a further order of things which are very central to civilisation as we know it start to collapse as well, most notably the ideas that there are external concepts of “right” and “wrong” at all. | ||
Throughout the first three quarters of the book, Dennett is thoroughly persuasive, with the assistance of {{author|Richard Dawkins}}’ wonderful idea of the “[[meme]]” (which is a great meme in itself); the idea which reproduces itself and mutates within and between human brains: Just as organisms do, “fit” memes find currency and reproduce with ease; and “weak” memes aren’t able to occupy enough brains, and eventually die out. | Throughout the first three-quarters of the book, Dennett is thoroughly persuasive, with the assistance of {{author|Richard Dawkins}}’ wonderful idea of the “[[meme]]” (which is a great meme in itself); the idea which reproduces itself and mutates within and between human brains: Just as organisms do, “fit” memes find currency and reproduce with ease; and “weak” memes aren’t able to occupy enough brains, and eventually die out. | ||
It is analogies like these that display the power of the idea: the Darwinist meme has outgrown biology and is finding application (for which read: reproducing and mutating) in epistemology, ethics, sociology, economics and pretty much every other academic discipline when you stop to think about it. The implications for this, as a unifying theory of everything, are immense. | It is analogies like these that display the power of the idea: the Darwinist meme has outgrown biology and is finding application (for which read: reproducing and mutating) in epistemology, ethics, sociology, economics and pretty much every other academic discipline when you stop to think about it. The implications for this, as a unifying theory of everything, are immense. | ||