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Title: DARWIN'S DANGEROUS IDEA: EVOLUTION AND THE MEANINGS OF LIFE by Daniel C. Dennett ISBN: 0-684-82471-X Publisher: Touchstone Books Pub. Date: 12 June, 1996 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.78 (116 reviews)
Rating: 2
Summary: Dennett's Stupid Idea
Comment: If creationists wanted a book that would make evolution look absurd, they could do no better than Darwin's Dangerous Idea. Allies of science and reason are done no favor by the likes of Dennett (who, by the way, has no formal scientific qualifications) and his crudely reductionist screeds.
Rating: 4
Summary: A better focused book than you might think from the reviews
Comment: Dennett's take on Darwinian natural selection is better focused than suggests the reader debate whether or not he's a vile fascist out to incarcerate creationists' children. In penning an appreciation of how Darwin made conceivable a largely automatic process that could produce the complexity and diversity of our world, Dennet really targets not those arguing against Darwin from faith but those arguing from a very different point of view.
The book's real fire aims at those who attack Darwin while pretending to search for the simplest scientific explanation of speciation. Creationists have other reasons to reject this body of thought. But Stephen Jay Gould and Noam Chomsky pretend to be interested only in the scientific question of simplest explanation.
This is what's damaging about their claim to identify Darwinian deficiencies forcing far more complex accounts of biological facts that amount to an abandonment of explanations at natural selection's level of accessibility. And this is why Dennett's demonstration that those deficiencies in fact force us to make only minor amendments to Darwin's framework is so effective and valuable.
Rating: 5
Summary: Excellent Round-up; be cautious if you are a newbie
Comment: I agree with some of the other reviewers that this is the most complete round-up of Darwin and the modern synthesis. Dennett is an excellent writer and even if he belabors some examples to the point of redundancy, he always seeks clarity and never leaves himself open for misinterpretation.
Dennett makes the argument that Darwin's ideas can be boiled down to algorithmic systems building on one another and suggests that researchers should focus their energy on finding ideas that support small, incremental evolutions rather than large sweeping changes that wind up as unexplainable phenomena. Dennett's suggestions are well-founded and I find his arguments to be quite persuasive.
I think, though, that at some points, Dennett singles out others -- particularly in the natural sciences -- for a few hatchet jobs. I am referring in particular to Stephen Jay Gould and John Maynard Smith. I find Dennett's readings of these authors to be, in his own terms, "myopic" at best. Every scientist can be wrong: it's a natural extension of discovery to expect theories to be refined. Pointing out the mistakes others have made, or areas in which the author believes the findings to be questionable, should not be an outright denial of methodology which it has the occasion to become quite often in this book.
I would approach Darwin's Dangerous Idea with these things in mind: you should seriously consider reading Gould for yourself--Wonderful Life is a great book; and Dennett draws heavily on the works of John Maynard Smith, Steven Pinker, and Richard Dawkins: a thorough reading of these authors will better prepare you for connections Dennett attempts to create.
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Title: Consciousness Explained by Daniel C. Dennett ISBN: 0316180661 Publisher: Back Bay Books Pub. Date: 20 October, 1992 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: Freedom Evolves by Daniel C. Dennett ISBN: 0670031860 Publisher: Viking Press Pub. Date: 10 February, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins ISBN: 0192860925 Publisher: Oxford Press Pub. Date: September, 1990 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design by Richard Dawkins ISBN: 0393315703 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: September, 1996 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
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Title: How the Mind Works by Steven Pinker ISBN: 0393318486 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: 01 January, 1999 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
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