Philosophy of Science

Darwin's Dangerous Idea

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Daniel Dennett

1995

Darwin's Dangerous Idea is Dennett's defence and extension of Darwinian evolution as a universal acid that dissolves traditional ideas about design, purpose, and mind. The dangerous idea is that natural selection is an algorithmic process — mindless, purposeless, mechanical — that is nonetheless capable of producing all the apparent design in the living world and eventually, through the evolution of minds, genuine meaning and intentionality. Dennett argues that this algorithm is substrate-neutral: it can run on any material that supports variation, heredity, and selection. He distinguishes between Skyhooks — imagined top-down forces that import order from outside (God, the life force, directed mutation, the strong anthropic principle) — and Cranes, which are bottom-up processes that genuinely lift complexity from simpler components. All legitimate explanation uses Cranes, never Skyhooks. The book ranges from biology and genetics through cognitive science, language evolution, and cultural evolution (memes), and mounts a direct challenge to Stephen Jay Gould's punctuated equilibrium and to the idea that Darwinism has limits that protect a domain for traditional humanist values.