1. Roughly 47% of Americans believe the theories in this book to be complete and utter bullshit at best, and at worst the work of the devil. That same 47 percent of the population that doesn’t believe in evolution also do not believe in the Sumerians or Dinosaurs. There is nothing that can be said to make them see that they could possibly be wrong about the world being created roughly 6,500 years ago, but that is fine because I believe the world was actually created 10 seconds ago, and it was created all for me, with everyone and everything in it, including all my memories supplied just to give me and my own personal universe a history, which of course it is lacking since it has only existed for about a minute and a half now. Sorry that you don’t exist as much more than a ‘thing’ (and not even really that, most of you are just kind of there as non-entities I will never actually encounter, but even if I do you are still only in my head, so you’re not even things. But if you are a non-thing reading this feel free to click that you like this review) only here as color for my universe.

2. If you don’t believe you’re uneducated about the theory of evolution, this book may not be the best place to start. I think Dennett doesn’t mean for this to be an introduction to the topic, maybe a road map, where he points out some interesting spots along the way, and gives you ample opportunities to read and learn more for yourself in his 35 page bibliography, but if you are half-ignorant, like me, then you are going to be taking a lot of what he says at face value, for the time being at least. Instead of being a primer into the theory, the book is an expansive overview of the controversies and ramifications of the evolution on a wide variety of topics. Unless one is super-duper smart in all different fields, there is probably going to be quite a lot that you’ll end up just nodding along to, accepting Dennett’s reading of a particular issue and his answers to those issues. At times I probably got too accepting and just nodded along with my critical goggles put safely away since I had no idea how to judge the merits of the arguments being presented.

3. Three is a special number. It’s the dialectic, it’s the dad, the kid and the not so friendly ghost, it’s got lots of other meanings that my head knows but which it doesn’t want to give up right now. It’s also the number of thinkers that I’ve always imagined, and I’m guessing most people who care about things like this would agree with, that are considered the Heavy-Weights of revolutionary thinkers that shaped modernity. That would be Darwin, Marx and Freud. Can this be considered pretty un-controversial? Good. Or not, but at least nod along with me and pretend you agree.

4. Lets leave Daniel Dennett here and move across the pond, so to speak, to the universe of Continental philosophy. What Dennett is putting forth in this book is that Darwin’s dangerous idea isn’t just about decentering the universe and man’s place in it. It’s not just about showing that creationism is the intellectual equivalent of believing that the world is flat or that the sun rotates around the Earth. Dennett calls the idea of evolution a universal acid that is so strong it corrodes everything it touches, or maybe not corrodes, but changes at least. Using a different metaphor, and one more apt to Continental philosophy, Darwin’s idea is a hammer that smashes right through most of Western Philosophy. Nietzsche wanted to philosophize with a hammer, well by Dennett’s description Darwin is the tool that can do that. Plato’s theory of ideal forms? Smash. Aristotelian means and his four basic causes? Smash. Cartesian duality? Smash. John Locke? Smash! Why? This might not be totally accurate, but I could argue it and in a manner of thinking it’s true, Darwin removed metaphysics and teleology and was able to give the ground work for a scientifically provable explanation for the world.

tRemoving the science part, isn’t this kind of what the most contemporary strands of Continental thought were trying to do? Isn’t saying philosophy is dead, the author has died, God is dead, etc., isn’t deconstructing everything in sight, travesing plateaus, seeing the world as a simulacra, declaring reality to have been left behind (add any other wacky French theory here), aren’t these all ways of saying the entire tradition of Western Philosophy (or thought) is problematic? Funny thing is, I don’t ever remember coming across a Darwinian theorist in those intellectual waters. Which is kind of strange. Here is something that is being worked on with results, facts and figures and numbers and graphs and all of those things scientists come up with that can be used to show an entirely non-phantom description of the universe, the mind, creation, etc., and as far as I’m aware it is never used. Looking at the number people willing to use Lacan as an expert with his idea that the absent is actually more present than what is present and the present is actually not there at all (seriously did this actually help anyone who went to get psychiatric help? I find it to be great fun to think in these lines, but outside of coming up with neat explanations for texts where does this go? What kind of proof can there be? It’s fun sophistry.), or overextending Marx to cover anything under the sun and stick it with a teleology, or to step back one level of influence, the continued predominance of Hegelian thinking, which where it’s true it’s kind of like saying so what, and where it’s wrong it’s embarrassing the degree that it’s wrong by.

I’m a little embarrassed that I never thought of the ramifications that Dennett pointed out until now. Not that I ever really studied Darwin at all, or any science for that matter, but just the general ideas that are opened up by his explanation of evolution aren’t a big intellectual leap to see how it ultimately undermines metaphysics, and can remove the boogeymen of the soul and god from the intelligent thoughts about causality.

4. Four is the tetrad. The most perfect number to Pythagoras, 1+2+3+4=10. I’m just throwing that in because I have nothing more. This review I thought would be more coherent. I thought I’d have something productive to say. I thought my thoughts on continental philosophy would be more substantial, but they aren’t. I’ll have to keep working on them and maybe share them in a review where they will be even more out of place.

He really is knowledgeable about both biology and philosophy. I even agree with him, so far as I could follow his arguments, almost on everything. My hangup is his love of metaphors, synecdoches (a word Dennett taught me), and neologisms, of which the two most commonly used are cranes and skyhooks. I have a feeling he was hoping that one of his inventions would catch on like Richard Dawkins' fabulously successful selfish-gene and meme. I know Dennett cares because he even quotes Dawkins explaining why he chose the word meme to stand for what it does as far back as 1976. Eumemics, which is supposed to sound like eugenics, was his one neologism which I actually liked, but alas, it never took off. Maybe others, like the countless positive reviewers quoted on the first pages and back cover, find his writing style refreshing or something, but I found it annoying. Please note that Dennett refers to this book as a philosophy book, which it is probably more accurate than the science category the publisher listed on the back cover. In any case, there are quite a few biology/science facts to make readers feel they are at least making some contact with the actual biological world and not just reading some abstract treatise about the "meaning of life," a phrase which in fact appears in the subtitle of the book.

Although Dennett says he is just humbly giving readers a "reminder of something quite obvious," specifically, that "no remotely compelling system of ethics has ever been  made computationally tractable, even indirectly, for real-world problems." Now it may be obvious, but I for one needed the reminder. Kantianism and Utilitarianism shortfalls in this regard are cited as examples. Perhaps obvious, but I thought this material which can be found in the first section of chapter seventeen particularly important anyway.

Probably the best text I've read on evolutionary theory.

This was another book that was recommended for the course I am taking through courssera.org. I have to say, I am certainly glad that we went through a great deal of what this book covered because I was able to skip a few chapters here and there. This was a long detailed book, and at sometimes too detailed. Dennett wanted to show how a good idea could become a dangerous idea out of fear, incomprehension, and downright refusal to accept what is right before your eyes.

Through it all, I have ended with a few great quotes that I can use the next time someone tells me I am wrong, or it is heresy to think this way.

2016.03.04–2016.03.10

Contents

Dennett DC (1995) (27:04) Darwin's Dangerous Idea - Evolution and the Meanings of Life

Preface

Part I: Starting in the Middle

01. Tell Me Why
01.1. Is Nothing Sacred?
01.2. What, Where, When, Why—and How?
01.3. Locke's "Proof" of the Primacy of Mind
01.4. Hume's Close Encounter

02. An Idea Is Born
02.1. What Is So Special About Species?
02.2. Natural Selection—an Awful Stretcher
02.3. Did Darwin Explain the Origin of Species?
02.4. Natural Selection as an Algorithmic Process
02.5. Processes as Algorithms

03. Universal Acid
03.1. Early Reactions
03.2. Darwin's Assault on the Cosmic Pyramid
03.3. The Principle of the Accumulation of Design
03.4. The Tools for R and D: Skyhooks or Cranes?
03.5. Who's Afraid of Reductionism?

04. The Tree of Life
04.1. How Should We Visualize the Tree of Life?
04.2. Color-coding a Species on the Tree
04.3. Retrospective Coronations: Mitochondrial Eve and Invisible Beginnings
04.4. Patterns, Oversimplification, and Explanation

05. The Possible and the Actual
05.1. Grades of Possibility?
05.2. The Library of Mendel
05.3. The Complex Relation Between Genome and Organism
05.4. Possibility Naturalized

06. Threads of Actuality in Design Space
06.1. Drifting and Lifting Through Design Space
06.2. Forced Moves in the Game of Design
06.3. The Unity of Design Space

Part II: Darwinian Thinking in Biology

07. Priming Darwin's Pump
07.1. Back Beyond Darwin's Frontier
07.2. Molecular Evolution
07.3. The Laws of the Game of Life
07.4. Eternal Recurrence—Life Without Foundations?

08. Biology Is Engineering
08.1. The Sciences of the Artificial
08.2. Darwin Is Dead—Long Live Darwin!
08.3. Function and Specification
08.4. Original Sin and the Birth of Meaning
08.5. The Computer That Learned to Play Checkers
08.6. Artifact Hermeneutics, or Reverse Engineering
08.7. Stuart Kauffman as Meta-Engineer

09. Searching for Quality
09.1. The Power of Adaptationist Thinking
09.2. The Leibnizian Paradigm
09.3. Playing with Constraints

10. Bully for Brontosaurus
10.1. The Boy Who Cried Wolf?
10.2. The Spandrel's Thumb
10.3. Punctuated Equilibrium: A Hopeful Monster
10.4. Tinker to Evers to Chance: The Burgess Shale Double-Play Mystery

11. Controversies Contained
11.1. A Clutch of Harmless Heresies
11.2. Three Losers: Teilhard, Lamarck, and Directed Mutation
11.3. Cui Bono?

Part III: Mind, Meaning, Mathematics, and Morality

12. The Cranes of Culture
12.1. The Monkey's Uncle Meets the Meme
12.2. Invasion of the Body-Snatchers
12.3. Could There Be a Science of Memetics?
12.4. The Philosophical Importance of Memes

13. Losing Our Minds to Darwin
13.1. The Role of Language in Intelligence
13.2. Chomsky Contra Darwin: Four Episodes
13.3. Nice Tries

14. The Evolution of Meanings
14.1. The Quest for Real Meaning
14.2. Two Black Boxes
14.3. Blocking the Exits
14.4. Safe Passage to the Future

15. The Emperor's New Mind, and Other Fables
15.1. The Sword in the Stone
15.2. The Library of Toshiba
15.3. The Phantom Quantum-Gravity Computer: Lessons from Lapland

16. On the Origin of Morality
16.1. E Pluribus Unum?
16.2. Friedrich Nietzsche's Just So Stories
16.3. Some Varieties of Greedy Ethical Reductionism
16.4. Sociobiology: Good and Bad, Good and Evil

17. Redesigning Morality
17.1. Can Ethics Be Naturalized?
17.2. Judging the Competition
17.3. The Moral First Aid Manual

18. The Future of an Idea
18.1. In Praise of Biodiversity
18.2. Universal Acid: Handle with Care

Appendix: Tell Me Why
Bibliography
Index

For those of you Game of Thrones fans, Daniel Dennett is like the George R. R. Martin of Darwin. 

For those of you Darwin fans, George R. R. Martin is like the Daniel Dennett of Dungeons & Dragons.

For those of you Dungeons & Dragons fans, you're probably already familiar with both George R. R. Martin and Daniel Dennett, so I guess you guys (probably not girls, but maybe) are the intended audience of this review. 

Before going any further did you ever notice how Daniel Dennett and George R. R. Martin look like twins separated at birth. Seriously, Google image search them and tell me I'm wrong.

In fact, if you slapped a Greek fisherman's hat and a black Members Only jacket on Daniel Dennett, I doubt I could tell those two apart.

I guess the easiest way to tell them apart would be their bank accounts. My guess is Martin is quite a bit more wealthy than Dennett.

In America you can make a whole heck of a lot more money writing about fantasy then dispelling fantasy (oh snap). 

In case you didn't catch my drift, Daniel Dennett has made a career out of writing about Darwin. And to further elaborate, Charles Darwins dangerous idea is like the acid that melts crystal unicorns and rainbows down into a brownish green, smelly ectoplasm with bacteria in it. 

Admittedly less fun in many ways than an ancient world of wizardry, craft and jealous, wrathful deities and demigods (Dungeons & Dragons reference). But really fucking clarifying and useful if you want to understand the way the world actually is.

Dennett and Martin are more similar than different though. Both have clearly spent too much time sitting at a desk (that was a fat joke), both are amazingly long winded (in the good way), and both are masterful at bringing their epically vast worlds to life via cool literary devices. 

Dennett would refer to such devices as "intuition pumps" i.e. cool functional metaphors (like sky hooks and universal acid) that make difficult ideas suddenly accessible, and thereby more useful and generative.

Warning!

This book is long.

REAL FUCKIN LONG MAN.

Dangalang is it long..............

I'm really enjoying it and still, it feels too long, almost as if it needed a.. uhhh.....how do you say.....editor?

At least one whole (normal) book length section of this epically long book is a ridiculously lengthy and through defenestration (that's right, defenestration, look it up, I'm pretty sure this is a legit alt usage of the word) of Steven J. Gould's theory's e.g. Spandrals of San Marcos and the Panglossian Paradigm. And it's about as warm and fuzzy as a Red Wedding.

Oh my god. I'm so glad I'm not on Dennetts hit list. That man can talk ya ta death. Do not mess with Dan Dennett. He will pillory you with iron verbiage and pitch you out the moon door.

Dennett tosses a lot of ideas around in this book, but the central idea of evolution as a repeating, simple algorithm is probably the one that will really stick with me in the end. It's a cool way of framing evolution via natural selection. A mindless, iterative process that somehow eventually spins minds out of frisky dirt. If you're opposing that dangerous idea, than I got news for ya. Winter is coming.

Interesting beginning, but the philosophizing and repetitiveness takes over. Half of it is refuting other peoples' writings. If you're not already familiar with important philosophical concepts and terminology, and you haven't read Stephen Jay Gould before, I can't really recommend this book. I will say that the idea of skyhooks and cranes is really fantastic, though.

Comprehensive discussion of the theory of evolution

Daniel C. Dennett’s book is worthy of its subject matter. That is to say, beautiful in its essence, but complex in its details. Dennett is not trying just to explain Darwin’s core ideas about evolution or natural selection. Rather, he is trying to explain how evolution fits into humanity’s understanding of itself, life and the world. To do so, he has to explain his views on evolution’s context, its implications for human understanding, and the philosophical and scientific currents it rides. He grapples with the emotional uproar that the idea of evolution produced. He works hard to illustrate these concepts, via stories, autobiographical asides, examples, metaphors, drawings, quotes and even jokes. The book is challenging, because of the stimulating content, but absorbing. getAbstract recommends it warmly to readers interested in evolution, and in the intersection of science and culture. Despite its methodical approach, this thoughtful exploration is not for beginners. One other caveat: If you want science blended with faith, Dennett believes that given humanity’s quest for facts, “There is no future in a sacred myth.” He forthrightly tells those who are distressed by this point of view to “close the book now and tiptoe away.”

On the one hand, in the modern world there is no need to convince anyone of the correctness of the postulates of Darwin's Evolutionary theory, most living people accept it a priori. On the other hand, in the understanding of many intelligent educated people, it boils down to "man descended from a monkey" and "the fittest survives". And since one species of bipedal bipeds without feathers succeeded, therefore it is the crown of creation, you can not think about it further. Philosopher, professor at Taft University and prominent popularizer of science Daniel Dennett is sure of the opposite, he believes that Darwin's theory has not only not lost its relevance as a subject of discussion, but its postulates can be extended to innumerable spheres of modern life: from related biology and genetics to seemingly incredibly distant - engineering, communication theory, memetics, cognitivism, design, programming.

Окончательное "Зачем?"
С одной стороны, в современном мире нет необходимости убеждать кого бы то ни было в верности постулатов дарвиновой Эволюционной теории, большинством живущих она принята априорно. С другой, в понимании многих неглупых образованных людей она сводится к «человек произошел от обезьяны» и «выживает наиболее приспособленный». А поскольку одному виду двуногих прямоходящих без перьев это удалось, стало быть он и есть венец творенья, дальше об этом можно не думать. Философ, профессор университета Тафта и видный популяризатор науки Дэниел Деннет уверен в обратном, он считает, что теория Дарвина не только не утратила актуальности в качестве предмета обсуждения, но ее постулаты можно распространить на неисчислимое множество сфер современной жизни: от смежных биологии и генетики до казалось бы невероятно далеких - инженерного дела, теории коммуникаций, меметики, когнитивизма, дизайна, программирования.

«Опасная идея Дарвина. Эволюция и смысл жизни» Darwin’s Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life опубликована Деннетом больше четверти века назад, в 1996, но не утратила актуальности на сегодняшний день, и это несмотря на революционные изменения сферы коммуникаций, появление и развитие социальных сетей, самого понятия которых не существовало в пору, когда книга писалась. Долгожительство имманентное свойство философии, и философов, добавлю. Интересно, как с точки зрения Эволюционной теории объясняется то, что подавляющее большинство философов живет долго (ну, за исключением тех, кому подносят чашу с цикутой). Но Сократ исключителен, с какой точки ни взгляни, а Деннет, в нынешние свои восемьдесят, бодр и преподает.

Наверняка есть какие-то социобиологические механизмы, обусловливающие соединение активной мозговой деятельности с более трезвым и глубоким взглядом на вещи и разумным отношением к физическому телу как главному рабочему инструменту — совокупности факторов, которые способствуют куда более долгому и плодотворному пребыванию в активной фазе, чем в среднем по популяции. Однако к книге. С прискорбием констатирую, что я не лучший из возможных читателей, способных полной мерой усвоить понятийные блоки, предлагаемые автором. По большей части это чтение было скучным, порой чрезмерно подробным, как в случае с невероятной длины пассажем о программистах А и Б, которых Деннет с упорством, достойным лучшего применения, сажает в ящики, заставляет зажигать лампочки: красную, зеленую и лимонно-желтую, потом отправляет в тех же ящиках на Марс и во всякие другие интересные места, заставляя подозревать в несчастных свойства шредингерова кота.

Я отдаю себе отчет, что в большинстве случаев,когда книга становилась мне невыносимо скучна, проблему надо было искать в себе, не сумевшей последовать за всеми извивами авторской мысли и на каком-то из витков соскользнувшей со спирали взаимодействия. Возможно имело смысл вернуться и начать чтение смутного для понимания фрагмента с точки, когда интерес был утрачен. Но я не студентка и не аспирантка Деннета, он не мой научный руководитель и от умения войти с ним в резонанс, оказаться и остаться на одной волне не зависит мое карьерное и/или финансовое благополучие. Я читатель — элитный потребитель в пелевинской классификации, и в эт��й ипостаси вправе желать, чтобы информация, которую он стремится до меня донести, была упакована в соответствующую максимальному пониманию форму. В противном случае, любимая автором лимонно-желтая лампочка не вспыхнет а результатом потраченных времени и сил станет неудачная коммуникация, что равнозначно отсутствию коммуникации как таковой. Чтение процесс с двумя участниками, и если понимания не случилось, определенная доля вины лежит на обоих. Не отрицая своей, вынуждена признать, что Дэниел Деннет не лучший популяризатор из возможных.

Что понравилось и запомнилось из "Опасной идеи Дарвина":
- "Небесный крюк" против "подъемных кранов". Концепция небесного крюка,
своего рода "потому что гладиолус", предполагающая объяснение всего, для чего трудно подобрать логически-непротиворечивое объяснение, вмешательством бога из машины, и противопоставленная ей идея подъемного крана: от малого к большему, а затем к великому - чтобы построить что-то, что не удается сделать руками, мы строим подъемный кран, если его мощности недостаточно для решения задачи - строим при его помощи больший подъемный кран. Сколь бы колоссальной ни была задача, обладая достаточно большим подъемным краном, мы ее решим.
- Эволюция как алгоритмический процесс. Метод проб и ошибок на протяжении истории развития жизни, соотнесенный с поиском оптимального кода компьютерной программы, где "0" нежизнеспособный вариант, "1" способный к продлению рода и следовательно - к дальнейшей передаче наследственной информации.
- Эффект QWERTY - откат по каким-то причинам от оптимального варианта к куда менее приемлемому и закрепление в исторической перспективе именно этого, не лучшего с точки зрения прогресса, приспособляемости, рациональности признака - природа не мыслит категориями человеческих понятий.
- Меметика как сфера значимых идей, идущая путями Эволюционной теории. Мемы в науке это не репост в сетях котиков и рыбов, но значимые артефакты второй природы (искусственно созданные): колесо, костер, велосипед, "Лебединое озеро" - все это разного уровня значимости мемы, и Деннет убедительно аргументирует, что пути их развития соотносятся с Теорией естественного отбора.
- "Эффект Гулда" - Поразительная легкость, с какой обывательское восприятие хватает хорошо изложенную гипотезу, подвергающую сомнению некоторые способы толкования научного знания, и объявляет ее отменяющей знание в целом. Их работ отменного популяризатора Стивена Гулда, изрядное число слышавших о них делает вывод, что Дарвина отменили, при том, что Гулд адепт дарвинизма.
- Акватическая теория Элейн Морган - моя самая большая любовь в книге. Ошельмованная лженаучной гипотеза "водной обезьяны" как недостающего звена между неандертальцем и хомо сапиенс, объясняющая наши безволосость и прямохождение.

Я не чужда веры и воинствующий атеизм Деннета расцениваю, хотя менее разрушительным, чем религиозный фанатизм, но не менее деструктивным. Моя вера в Бога не препятствует уважению и признанию дарвинизма, и не понимаю, почему одно непременно должно отрицать другое. Интересная, но не бесспорная книга.

This is a philosopher's exploration of Darwin's Theory of Evolution and its implications on human life and meaning. It is extremely well put together and quite comprehensive, starting with the basics of evolution and extrapolating to the development of language, artificial intelligence and morality. Dennett explains the most fundamental building blocks of evolution and teaches the reader the mechanics of exactly how natural selection has resulted in the world as we experience it today.

In this book Dennett makes an authoritative case against the necessity of what he calls "skyhooks" in order to explain life and meaning. Skyhooks are the deus ex machina of science, invented to make the case for human exceptionalism. Dennett's able to show that evolutionary theory can dissolve just about any argument in favor of skyhooks into plain, old-fashioned incrementalism.

The vast majority of the book is devoted to this topic; considerably fewer pages are allocated to describing how morality and meaning can be generated by incrementalism, and I kept feeling there was a lot of hand waving going on in the final chapters. There was no Theory of Meaning clearly enunciated, but in Dennett's defense he wasn't trying to build one. In fact, he claims that no such beast exists, that morality, like life, is a finely gradated set of decisions in which the transition from right to wrong is never clear and only identifiable in retrospect.

This should not be anyone's first book about evolution, natural selection or Charles Darwin. Dennett, and this book in particular, was referenced in so many other books I'd read on evolution that I felt I needed to read one of his, but was somewhat surprised to find myself in something so abstract that I occasionally had trouble following him. If you're looking for a book about the nuts and bolts of evolution and natural selection this is not it. On the other hand, for those who are scientists, steeped in the literature of evolution and seeking a more theoretical or philosophical approach, or for those who enjoy reading works of philosophy and wish to enter the realm of evolution through that door then this book would probably be more enjoyable for them than it was for me. Thus my rating reflects my preference for less philosophical, more practical, hard science approaches to the subject of evolution, and not the quality of Dennett's writing or his arguments.