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

Darwin's "dangerous idea," as defined by orthodox neo-Darwinist Dennett (Consciousness Explained), is the belief that evolution, a mindless, mechanistic, purposeless process, gave rise to the single, branching tree of life and, further, that this process eliminates the need for invoking an intelligent God as the source of design. In a grand, provocative, gripping synthesis, Dennett, director of Tufts University Center for Cognitive Studies in Massachusetts, presents a lucid, elegant account of Darwinian evolution and its far-reaching implications for understanding human behavior and culture. He systematically attacks Harvard biologist Stephen Jay Gould's theory of "punctuated equilibria," which attempts to explain the sudden emergence of new species. Gould's various revisions of orthodox Darwinism are superfluous "false alarms," according to Dennett, who also lambastes E.O. Wilson, Roger Penrose, Noam Chomsky, B.F. Skinner and others. Expanding on biologist Richard Dawkins's concept of "memes," self-replicating ideas that are subject to natural selection, Dennett explores how language, mind, culture and morality could have evolved by Darwinian mechanisms.