by Daniel Dennett
Dennett calls natural selection a 'universal acid' - a mindless algorithmic process that eats through every traditional concept of design, purpose, and meaning and remakes them on naturalistic foundations. He defends adaptationism against Gould and Lewontin's critics and extends Darwinian thinking to culture, ethics, and the origin of mind through what he calls 'cranes, not skyhooks.'
In this collection, Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life references 5 other books.
It draws on The Selfish Gene, The Blind Watchmaker and The Origin of Species.
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The books Dennett references and why each one mattered to the argument.
Dennett builds Chapter 12 ('The Cranes of Culture') around Dawkins's meme concept from The Selfish Gene, defending memetics as a legitimate extension of Darwinian algorithms to cultural evolution.
Dennett repeatedly cites Dawkins's Blind Watchmaker for its cumulative-selection argument, using it to dismantle the 'skyhook' intuitions of Darwin's critics.
Dennett's entire argument is a defense and extension of Darwin's Origin of Species, treating natural selection as the algorithmic core he generalizes to design, culture, and meaning.
Dennett cites Dawkins's Extended Phenotype when arguing that selection's effects reach beyond the organism - a key premise for his claim that culture is subject to Darwinian algorithms.
Dennett engages directly with Wright's Moral Animal as a contemporary application of adaptationist thinking to human psychology, a program Dennett defends philosophically.
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Books from completely different categories that share citation overlap with this one. These are the reads you would not find by browsing a single shelf.
Books with the highest citation overlap within the same categories.
How the Mind Works
Steven Pinker
4 shared citations
Consciousness Explained
Daniel Dennett
3 shared citations
The Language Instinct
Steven Pinker
3 shared citations
In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto
Michael Pollan
3 shared citations
The Selfish Gene
Richard Dawkins
3 shared citations
The Moral Animal
Robert Wright
2 shared citationsThis book and its direct connections. Hover a node to see its title, click to visit.
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