Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life

Darwin’s Dangerous Idea is a book of the philosophy of science focusing on the idea of natural selection in evolution. It builds on some of the ideas in Richard Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene, including the idea of memes as selfish replicators on the same pattern as genes.

Dennet’s idea seems to be to counter challenges to the idea that the variety of life on earth could have been created entirely by natural selection acting on naturally occurring processes. He poses as one of the underlying objections to this idea the fact that many people, including scientists, are uncomfortable with the thought of everything being just random because they feel it takes all meaning out of their lives. This is where he brings in the meme idea in. He proposes that it is the memes that have created the mind (as opposed to the brain) rather than the other way around.

He also discusses quite a bit the idea of evolution as primarily an engineering problem (for both the genes and the memes) using examples from attempts at creating artificial intelligence among other things. Another engineering idea he introduces is the idea of “cranes” as tools of evolution.
These are factors that seem to group up in synchronous ways to speed up the entire process of evolution. He contrasts these cranes to what he calls “skyhooks,” cases where the evolutionary process would get a boost from some outside force of mind or design (kind of a deus ex machina effect) that he is looking to disprove.

Just how exactly these ideas describe what actually happened during the evolution of life on earth is difficult for just a regular person to say, but the whole concept is interesting. Except for some of the more far-flung philosophical discussions he makes his points fairly clearly. Recommended for people interested in science generally and evolution in particular. Also for philosophers.

This is the fourth Dennett book I've read, and I can now say I've understood and enjoyed 1/8 of them (here's what I thought of Consciousness Explained ;) ). The first half of DDI was painful and waffley, which is how I've experienced Dennett's other books - they promise so much, but they just don't deliver. The second half of DDI was great, in that it was mostly coherent and followable. I find many of Dennett's thought experiments to be convoluted, and his explanations of logical issues to be vague, with perhaps a lot of implied information in his allegories, which are legion, and jarring, and often unnecessary. He uses abstruse examples where clear, logical explanations would suffice.

One of my biggest gripes with DDI is that he didn't, IMO, explain Darwinian evolution as clearly as he should have, nor as often as he should have throughout the book. Evolution isn't a force. Evolution is what we call what gets left over after everything else has died. There are things that can replicate, and there is variation in the replication, and then there is an environment, and some replications survive, and some don't. Whatever survives is whatever survives. I think a lot of books don't make this very clear, and they keep implying that evolution creates something by selecting the fittest. Perhaps this is a remnant of our ancient teleological thinking, because by the time humans came to exist as conscious, rational beings, we were seeing things come into being that were the product of pseudo-teleology, or what Dennett would call a crane (a bottom up process requiring no special, supernatural intervention) that looks like a sky hook (a special case, in which something is inserted into the system that couldn't have come from a natural process). We were designing things, and now we're inclined to see all order as the product of teleological design, rather than sophisticated cranes made from cranes.

Where was I? So yeah, I think he could have reiterated this throughout the book, and it would have been more convincing and more powerful.

Dennett's writing style is often frustratingly unclear. As I mentioned above, he drifts in and out of analogies and thought experiments and logical reasoning while quoting poets and philosophers. Occasionally I would find myself understanding a sentence, but having no idea why he's talking about it. Perhaps I'm just not clever enough for this writing level. I suspect it's all part of his magisterial style of comprehensively addressing something from every possible angle so that by the time he's finished he's sewn together a complete and unassailable argument. To me it feels scattered and incomplete.

That said, he did a very thorough job of critiquing Gould and Chomsky, who for some reason can't give up sky hooks.

Toward the end of the book Dennett tries to talk about morality, and it's a bit weak. He also excoriates religion while suggesting a kind of coexistence with it. His criticisms are valid, but his suggestions are a bit absurd - ie, that religions be preserved in cultural zoos. Besides the fact that many religious people simply wouldn't allow it, what would be preserved wouldn't be the same religion, since many religions have features that require they be followed and proselyted. Dennett is really saying, "I don't want those belief systems because I think they're bad," which is in essence what everyone thinks of everyone else.

I'll add this book to my 'might read again one day' list. Perhaps I'll get more out of the first half.

This book felt like brain yoga. It was such a delight to follow the logic-based arguments Dennett constructs and the analogies he uses and the way he picks apart other people's bad arguments. Darwin's dangerous idea, he says, is like a universal acid that corrodes all our faiths and institutions. In fighting this, we have mischaracterized it, feared it, or run away from it. Dennett confronts it head on and explains what that means for us and for our culture. It's not overly scientific. It's well-reasoned, well-written, and a delight to read.

Expected some idea which uncovers the mystery behind the evolution and the very existence of humans and other species on earth. But I got a 600 page essay, where I can't find anything interesting or useful related to evolution.

Darwin's Dangerous Idea is, uh, strange. That is to say, I am not sure if Dennett knew his target audience.

This book doesn't seem to be written for lay-readers. At the very least, it is not for casual lay readers. You need to have read Dawkins, Gould, Pinker, etc. in sufficient detail to savor the most juicy parts of the book. Plus, it would not hurt if you knew something about eminent philosophers such as Locke, Neitzsche, Descartes and their methodologies.

Then again, this book isn't for professionals (read philosophers of science) either. I am sure they would find his arguments a bit wishy-washy. Perhaps, Dennett anticipated this. In his foreword, he says:

n  I want to get thinkers in other disciplines to take evolutionary thinking seriously, to show them how they have been underestimating it, and to show them why they have been listening to the wrong sirens. For this, I have to use more artful methods. I have to tell a story. You don't want to be swayed by a story? Well, I know you won't be swayed by a formal argument; you won't even listen to a formal argument for my conclusion.n

Anyhoo, it is what it is.

Dennett believes, and reiterates throughout this book, that Darwin's dangerous idea is not merely the idea of evolution, but evolution by natural selection. And this idea is the 'universal acid' (Dennett's words, not mine) that would corrode our old ways of thinking, and leave us hanging in the air, if we did not devise new outlooks towards life. And I have to say, he constructs his arguments carefully, eloquently, though not always in the simplest of terms.

The point Dennett is trying to make is this: Darwinism is algorithmic. (Even if he had nothing else to offer in this book, which is not the case at all, his treatment of what algorithms are all about is exquisite.)

n  Here, then, is Darwin’s dangerous idea: the algorithmic level is the level that best accounts for the speed of the antelope, the wing of the eagle, the shape of the orchid, the diversity of species, and all the other occasions for wonder in the world of nature.n

And Dennett is not afraid to wade into dirtier waters. He faces opponents as formidable as Gould, Chomsky, and Penrose, and obstacles as diverse as mind, language, AI, and ethics, armed with nothing more than his Darwinian sword.

You may not agree with his thesis in entirety but Dennett’s arguments for why be believes he is right are well worth reading. Me, I am a fan.

The main argument of this book is that the theory of evolution by natural selection has even deeper implications for our understanding of the world than many prominent scientists and philosophers have been willing to grant it. In other words, Dennett isn’t as interested in convincing those who willfully remain ignorant about the validity of Darwin’s theory than he is in dismantling some of the more nuanced arguments against the further-reaching conclusions some of its proponents (Gould, Chomsky, Penrose) have made. The idea that algorithmic, blind selection can explain even the most complex phenomenon in our world, such as consciousness, language, biodiversity and even to a certain extent ideas or “memes”, is defended here against the arguments that evolution can be intentional or there might yet be unexplainable mechanisms or processes that offer better explanations.

Dennett is very thorough and convincing in this project. I’m far from an expert on any of the topics discussed here, but the ideas are presented logically enough for even a layperson to develop a general sense of the conversation without prerequisite knowledge. Through frequent use of real world examples and metaphors, Dennett gives a clear picture of evolution in action, and the reverse engineering framework that has been used to re-trace the steps that have led to the current state of the world.

Evolution is quite a vast concept to try to get your head around. For a long and sometimes difficult book though, I was never frustrated for long if I felt like I didn’t quite follow where Dennett was leading me since he keeps his focus relatively close to his mission statement. It’s a very theoretical book but worth the effort to follow along with the arguments. Dennett has a philosophical flourish to his writing that adds perspective to some of the more amazing aspects of the concepts discussed here. I feel like I’ve come out of it with an enhanced appreciation for the exceptionality of humans and our emergence from the enormous design space of evolution.

I hate to abandon a book before I finish it, but some books just force my hand in the matter. I picked up this book because I had always heard of Daniel Dennett, as he is one of the infamous "Four Horsemen of Atheism" (also including Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchins). I wanted to read some of his work, saw this book, and thought the title provocative.

However, the more I read, the more of a chore it became just to pick up the book. I don't want to give the wrong impression - this is probably not a bad book by any means! Perhaps if I were more intelligent, at least in the area of evolutionary biology and genetics, I'd find every word of this book fascinating beyond measure. Since I am not, I found the book a gigantic bore, with no hope of being anything more than that. I find that, ultimately, Dennett lacks the ability to connect with readers who are not as academic as he, such as writers like Dawkins or Sagan can. Reading this, I had that same feeling of hopelessness I would get when taking a really difficult class.

So, with heavy heart, much reluctance, and a huge migraine, I gave up at about Chapter Six. Maybe if I get more well versed in this subject by a writer that is better able to simplify it, I'll re-approach this book... or maybe I'll just sell the damn thing back to work.

One of the great privileges of the internet - once you avoid the algorithmic bombardment of misinformation and falsehood - is ample access to the highest quality public intellectuals, at least the ones who like to promote themselves and their ideas, like Noam Chomsky, Steven Pinker, Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Robert Sapolsky among many others. Philosopher Daniel Dennett was one of those in recent years. He made ample use of online opportunities to be interviewed, which is how I became acquainted with his ideas on consciousness and freewill, and what drew me to this book. He came across as careful, clear-thinking, affable and grounded. I expected these qualities to be reflected in his writing. So, it was more than a little surprising to find it not the case. I found a lot of the prose excessive, pages of unnecessarily convoluted explication, and the book a slog. In addition to being a general defense of Darwinism in both the natural and social sciences, a lot of the book is focused on criticising other thinkers, and in particular Stephen J. Gould and Roger Penrose. This book doesn't seem to know what species it wants to be, either a work of scholarship or something more oriented to a general readership. But the most annoying aspects of the text are when his tone flirts with sarcasm, and Dennett seems to want to show how clever he is by repeatedly using terms he's coined ('cranes' and 'skyhooks') which often don't help to elucidate his meaning. In my exposure to Dennett online, where he comes off as confident but also openminded, I didn't imagine he had a chip on his shoulder. With his recent passing I'm grateful that there is so much of his thought to explore in online lectures and interviews. This book didn't help me understand more. I would love to see a pared down version of this book (say half the length) geared to general public consumption.