One should treat this book as an "advanced introduction" to the subject of Darwinism. I would thus begin by recommending to any newcomers to the subject that one read a few other, easier introductions to evolution before reading this one, such as The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution by Richard Dawkins, Why Darwin Matters by Michael Shermer, Why Evolution Is True by Jerry Coyne, and Evolution for Everyone: How Darwin's Theory Can Change the Way We Think about Our Lives by David Sloan Wilson. Darwin's Dangerous Idea often goes into heavy detail in its analysis and application of Darwinian concepts, thereby justifying any decision to read these other works first.

The book establishes as its thesis that one ought to view the evolution as an unconscious algorithmic process, and that by doing so, one vastly improves the insights and epistemic utility of evolutionary theory with respect to the analysis of a wide range of other subjects. That is, since it is a philosophical, instead of a strictly scientific, book, Dennett extends the conclusions of evolutionary thinking to a broader range of subjects than what one typically identifies in evolutionary literature, including such subjects as cosmology, cosmogony, physics, and even AI.

Dennett surveys for his readers other, standard principles of modern Darwinian theory, and then applies such principles to the examination of such topics as the meaning of life and other long-cherished aspects of human existence, showing that Darwinian theory does not destroy the notions we cherish about our existence, but rather, further reinforces and clarifies them. For example, it has always struck me as evident that a materialist worldview, such as that held by the consistent Darwinian, does not preclude such metaphysical possibilities as a meaningful existence (e.g. "Doesn't the view that no Supreme Architect consciously creates and governs the universe foster cynicism or nihilism?"), but Dennett strengthens the point in novel ways that would not have necessarily occurred to me.

He furthermore dwells heavily on the theme that the Darwinian thinker should not generally attempt to devise alternative explanations to natural selection to explain adaptive features of life, and that all attempts to do so have failed. The quest to find such exceptions by thinkers within evolutionary biology has often proved a greater hindrance to progress in evolutionary science than the attacks of the more "pure" creationists outside of evolutionary science. Dennett exemplifies this unfortunate tendency by critically addressing the thought and pronouncements of "inconsistent evolutionist" thinkers, such as Stephen Jay Gould and Noam Chomsky.

I will not go so far as to claim that there aren't small bits in the book here and there I find objectionable, but they do not lessen the strength of its thesis and are close enough to trivial that I see no reason to lessen my five-star review of the work on the whole.

Really good--

Reading this rekindled my interest in evolutionary theory and I've duly added Darwin's The Origin of Species to my reading list and moved Dawkin’s Selfish Gene up the priority ladder. It's difficult to do justice to a book of such philosophical complexity and richness in a single review, but I will just note down some of the important concepts I’ve learned from this book:

1) Retrospective coronation. It’s impossible to identify the beginning of a species until much later because whether X is crowned the founder of a species depends on what happens to X’s offspring. Example: Say tomorrow a virulent virus wipes out 99% of humanity off the face of the earth, and you’re among the lucky survivors with a gene that happens to endow you with an immunity against that particular virus. Now, scientists conduct DNA analyses and concludes that the common ancestor of all the survivors—including you—turns out to be someone named Sara who had the gene mutation necessary to combat the virus. In other words, until the virus wiped out everyone except Sara’s mutated gene—a massively contingent event—Sara could not have been identified as the common ancestor of everyone.

2) Adaptationist thinking. Which is basically reverse engineering the function or purpose of something from its design. An important feature of this type of reasoning is the assumption of optimality: if X would be optimal for doing Y, then it probably was designed for Y. There are at least three considerations that any good adaptationist must keep in mind. The first is the ever-present possibility of opportunistic appropriation of the original function that Mother Nature is so good at (what Gould calls “exaptation”—a delightful word Dennett has exapted to his own usage), which would conceivably give rise to sub-optimal uses or functions. The second is the building process: there may be constraints to the process itself that may leave non-functional features in the final product, or limit the number of possible ways things can be built. This latter point can explain, for example, why most animal species go through very similar embryonic development stages, or in architecture, why the foundations of churches start out the same way. And finally, a good adaptationist should always watch out for the QWERTY phenomenon, where certain features may just be the result of historical happenstances (the dominance of the non-optimal QWERTY keyboard for example).

3) Cultural evolution. How memes take up residence in our brains and ultimately create a person. One important implication here is that thanks to memes and their interplay with our brain’s machinery, we are the only species on earth that can transcend our biological imperatives (take, for example, priests with their vow of abstinence). This evolutionary perspective on culture and personhood shed some much wanted light on the whole debate over the “naturalness” of marriage and other issues concerning human sexuality. Is marriage “unnatural”? Yes, it probably goes against our biological imperatives (if anyone’s interested in the details, check out, for example,Sex at Dawn for the view that monogamy is “unnatural”). But what these people miss—and underestimate—is the role culture plays in forming us as persons. Marriage may be damn hard—and most people do actually fail at it—but it is not impossible because we’re equipped with the brain-meme-culture power to mold this amorphous thing called “human nature.”

4) Biological possibility and evolutionary path. How biologically possible evolutionary paths are constrained by what came before. It is a question of accessibility: it’s more possible for us to, say, grow an extra thumb than grow wings in the next hundred years (though of course, if genetic engineering takes off, the latter might be equally possible). That is, some things are more possible than others.

5) “Threads of actuality” in Design Space. Design Space is basically all the design possibilities that evolution can generate—which is not infinite but vastly huge. The evolution on earth can, in principle, be mapped onto this Design Space, forming a vasnihingly small Tree of Life, or what Dennett calls “threads of actuality” in the immense space of possibility.

6) Convergence. Dennett borrows a chess term—“forced move”—to indicate any design solution in Design Space that are so good that Mother Nature can be counted on to arrive at over and over again. This concept comes in handy when analyzing cultures. A common cultural trait may be indicative of cultural transmission (or cultural cross-pollination) or forced moves in the game of design, i.e. reinvention. So from the fact that, say, two distant cultures had boats, we can’t conclude much about their cultural relationship—because boats are a good design solution to the problem of navigation that they could have been invented separately. In the same way, we can’t conclude from the ubiquity of certain features across human cultures that they are human universals.

7) Finally, good and bad reductionism. Reductionism in itself—defined as the desire to explain and unify everything under a single grand theory—is not bad. What is bad is when this desire gets out of hand, leading to oversimplification and falsification of the phenomenon in question. So bad reductionists, in their zeal to explain everything, try to do too much too fast. B.F. Skinner is a good example. The founder of behaviorism in psychology, he tried explain all of human learning in terms of operant conditioning. The correct response to these bad reductionists is always: “It’s not that simple.” Good reductionists, on the other hand, don’t do this. They want to explain everything with one big, unified theory, but they don’t rush to get there (e.g. think of physicists who dream of the unified theory, a theory to explain both the planetary motions and quantum physics).

Despite the book’s overall quality, I did have a few quibbles about this book. First is his lengthy discussion of Stephen Jay Gould and his adherents who rejected—or tried to, anyway—adaptationist explanations. Though interesting in parts (such as Gould's notion of "punctuated equilibrium" and the rate of evolutionary change, which reminded me of N.N. Taleb's "Black Swan" idea). Second, I would have appreciated some discussion of possibly Lamarckian epigenetic inheritance: the inheritance of acquired characteristics such as phobias, propensity for obesity, and immunity to certain viruses through a mechanism that doesn’t change the fundamental structure of the DNA.

All in all, a solid overview of evolutionary theory with a feast of food for thought.

I have read a lot of smart books. This is the smartest.

I started off very well with this book. At times I found it so intellectually exciting that I had to put it down after each paragraph and regain my composure. The ideas are well and wittily expressed. For example, the schoolboyish idea of a 'universal acid' that eats is way through everything and cannot be contained, as a metaphor for Darwin's idea of evolution by natural selection.

Unfortunately my enthusiasm wained as I read on. There is, in my opinion, just too much book. I felt progressively ground into the dust. More importantly I felt it didn't do what it said on the tin, which was, as I understood it, to inject meaning into a materialist and  mechanistic world view.
I remembered reading another of Dennett's books; "Consciousnesses Explained', and feeling the same thing, i.e. that it promised much but ultimately failed to deliver (unless you happen to be of the eliminitivist/illusionist persuasion).

I would say both these books are great achievements, important and well written, but, for me, fail in the final analysis; but of course, I may just have missed the point.

I found this to be the most technical reading I have encountered.

ایده خطرناک داروین:
در تمام طول تاریخ فکر بشر یک شکاف بزرگ در دنیا وجود داشت. بین ذهن ما انسان‌ها و مابقی جهان. ایده‌ی تکامل داروین به تعبیر نویسنده این دو جهان را به هم وصل کرد. ما از نظریه‌ی داروین معمولاً در زیست‌شناسی خوانده‌ایم. اما دنیل دنت در کتاب ایده خطرناک داروین نظریه‌ی تکامل را به عرصه‌های دیگر می‌برد و ادعا می‌کند اثر داروین بر فکر و دنیای ما بیش از چیزی است که معمولاً‌ تصور می‌کنیم.

برهم زدن نظم پیشین و دقیق‌تر نگاه کردن به ایده. فکر می‌کنیم داروین هم با ایده‌ی تکاملش همین کار رو کرده. نظم موجود رو برهم زده. هر موضوعی در برخورد با نظریه‌ی تکامل به ناچار دچار تحول می‌شود و باید تغییر شکل پیدا کند. برای همین مخالفت و مقاومت در برابر این ایده شدید است. به نظر ما خواندن کتاب ایده‌ی خطرناک داروین می‌تواند نظم ذهنی‌مان را برهم بزند.
https://bpluslinks.ir/yGjl

Darwin's Dangerous Idea

Quirky and bloviated. More philosophical than scientific. Even though it was published just a quarter century ago, this tome feels very old - there are even many hand drawings of basic evolutionary concepts that a high schooler could have done better. But I guess the message is still conveyed effectively.

I have long been a fan of Charles Darwin so I didn't think I would learn too much new. And yet there are tangents that Dennet goes off on that are quite interesting .

For example there was a chapter on algorithms, "according to Darwin, evolution is an algorithmic process." This chapter was bit of an epiphany for me. Yes algorithms are impersonal but so is evolution.

Or take another chapter where the author considers biology to be an engineering topic. Maybe we humans aren't doing the engineering but many principles are shared between the disciplines. This chapter should not be confused with the topic of intelligent design.

While the author does not have Richard Dawkins' overbearing but orderly and convincing way of teaching about the theory of evolution, he is extremely well read. Here in his magnum opus he pulls us in all kinds of directions, sometimes interesting ones, that aren't necessarily wrong but do not always buttress his conclusions.

4 stars.

This was by far the most annoying book I read in college. It isn't just wordy; it's bloated with needless
tangents and almost incomprehensibly dense passages. I watched an entire college science class misunderstand this for two excruciating weeks of debate and left thoroughly disappointed in Dennett's prose. It's simply too long and stuffy for its own good; and worse, for a 600-page monolith, it insists on simplifying things to "God did it by miracle" or "natural selection did it mindlessly." This is a typical A/B argument that a lot of popular scientists and religious types subscribe to because they only have to insult one opponent to win, and no other school of thought is given credibility. And oh, how he insults his opposition. From his crane and sky hook analogies, to all his snide remarks about religion, to his adopting Darwin's means for arguments about physics and psychology (things Darwinians might enjoy, but that Darwin himself would have bawked at), his conclusions are neither philosophically sound nor scientifically useful. Dawkins handles memes better, Gould handles evolution better, and pretty much anything on the physics and spirituality bookshelves at the store does those domains better credit.

While I did actually like this book quite a bit and think it’s incredibly brilliant, my reason for 3 stars is that 1) as many might guess it’s extremely dense and difficult to follow at times and 2) I disagree quite a bit with Dennett’s analysis in his large section and time devoted to Stephen Jay Gould and punctuated equilibrium.
Over all i think think all should read this and I was thoroughly impressed by how he ended the book on the role of religion in modern and future generations.

Hình ảnh teo tinh hoàn và cách điều trị teo tinh hoàn
Teo tinh hoàn là bệnh lý khó chữa và đặc biệt cần phát hiện sớm và điều trị kịp thời thì mới không ảnh hưởng đến chức năng sinh lý nam giới gây tình trạng vô sinh, hiếm muộn. Do vậy bài viết Hình ảnh teo tinh hoàn và cách điều trị teo tinh hoàn được chia sẻ ngay dưới đây chúng tôi sẽ giúp bạn hiểu rõ hơn về bệnh cùng cách chữa trị kịp thời.

Tư vấn bác sĩ triệu chứng các bệnh về tai mũi họng - PKDK Hoàn Cầu

TÌM HIỂU BỆNH TEO TINH HOÀN
1. Tinh hoàn ở nam là gì?
Nếu như ở nam giới bình thường thì sẽ có hai tinh hoàn nằm hai bên trái phải, ở giữa dương vật và nó được bao bọc bởi lớp bao cân trắng. Trung bình mỗi một tinh hoàn có từ 400 đến 600 ống sinh tinh nằm thành những vòng cung nối lại với nhau ở một đầu. Với đầu còn lại sẽ đồ vào mào tinh, giữa các ống sinh tinh chính là cách mạch máu thần kinh cùng tế bào Ledig.

Tinh hoàn sẽ có chức năng thực hiện sản xuất tinh trùng cũng như tiết ra testosterone chiếm đến 95% testosterone bên trong cơ thể và nó có vai trò đặc biệt với việc sinh sản, duy trì nòi giống, quyết định đến sự phát triển đặc tính sinh dục nam giới.
https://dakhoahoancautphcm.vn/hinh-an...

2. Thế nào là bị teo tinh hoàn?
Teo tinh hoàn chính là tinh hoàn bị teo nhỏ. Nó sẽ mất đi một số tế bào mầm cùng tế bào Leydig. Tế bào mầm có chức năng tạo tinh trùng còn với tế bào Leydig cấu tạo hormone testosterone-hormone sinh dục nam. Đây đều là 2 tế bào có vai trò quan trọng đối với việc duy trì chức năng sinh sản nam giới.

Teo tinh hoàn sẽ dẫn đến sụt giảm số lượng tinh trùng cũng như suy giảm ham muốn trầm trọng. Nhưng teo tinh hoàn thường hay nhầm lẫn với sự co lại do nhiệt độ lại. Vì bìu thường co lại nhằm mục đích giữ ấm cho tinh hoàn đến khi nhiệt độ ổn định thì nó mới trở lại một cách bình thường.

3-1/2 stars. Really strong beginning, really strong closing, and really long and dense in-between. On this subject matter, there is an unfortunate amount of preaching to the choir. Dennett is sensitive to this and, for a small audience of highly intelligent fence-sitters, he might nab a few converts. For the rest of us willing to tackle this book, his intellectual arguments are novel and stimulating. His background and approach are more from philosophy than from biology, and that may have contributed to my finding his writing less accessible than Pinker's or Dawkins's. But not impenetrable; his style lacks Gould's high-brow, intellectual jibber-jabber. A lot of the book is critique of the arguments of other researchers and writers, as if its great length was intended to build up his team's defensive arsenal in a long-standing feud with an opposing team of intellectuals that lack the capacity and imagination to accept that Darwinian evolution adequately explains everything without "resorting to skyhooks", to use a Dennett favorite, or what I call "hand-waving". I was sufficiently challenged with this book. I enjoyed a lot of it but found it tedious at times.

I have to admit that I feel guilty every time I read Dennett. Simply put, of the infamous Four Horsemen, he is by far my least favorite. I know I'm *supposed* to like him. I respect his opinions and ideas. He''s a gifted thinker. Maybe it simply boils down to I think he's NOT a gifted writer - particularly when compared to his three peers. He frankly just bores the shit out of me. He can take any topic, an interesting one such as this book's thesis, and make it so fucking boring I just want to yawn and fall asleep, while Hitchens slays me, Dawkins educates and challenges me, and Harris goes to interesting places in a very reader-friendly style. And you know, I've read a HELL of a lot of philosophy and science and religion over my decades of life and one could probably pick a number of "boring" writers out from among the lot, but many of them stimulate my intellect. Dennett does neither, at least not in a very impressive or outstanding fashion. I just think he's ... mediocre. Average. Can't carry his weight compared to the other three, let alone other recent and contemporary philosophers. He occasionally writes on important and intriguing topics. Sadly, nearly any other writer of stature would likely do a much better job of it. Subjective, yes, but then isn't every book review merely one's opinion, and as such, I'm entitled to mine. I had a lot of professors in the various universities I attended who knew their stuff, were SMEs, far above me quite often, but even so, quite a large number -- having to "publish or perish" -- couldn't write worth shit. I earned several degrees and studied for more in other fields AND I taught at several universities and I'll tell you this -- not only do they not require academics to take advanced or professional or academic or ANY writing classes in grad school, but they don't even teach them how to fucking TEACH! Sure, I took pedagogy classes in grad school, but that's theory and it's not remotely practical once you get in a large classroom facing tons of students representing more than two dozen languages. At that point, one realizes they probably know THEIR stuff, but they're not prepared to teach it, nor are they prepared to write about it in an officially "academic" manner. The difference is, some can pull one or both off and many can't. Dennett strikes me as someone who fits the latter description and I'd wager that's true and realistic. I don't doubt his intellect. I doubt his ability to effectively and intelligently communicate what it produces. Dawkins is an example of someone who has gone much further in his abilities to do so considering it's highly likely he fits the standard model of preparation at writing for publication - he's learned to be effective, intelligent, knowledgable, and interesting. Dennett has not, which is a pity because I believe I'd gain a lot hearing him give a lecture. Book? Cautiously recommended at best...