Efter Pinker var det dags för nästa bok som snällt väntat i bokhyllan: Darwin´s Dangerous Idea av Daniel C. Dennett. Jag har hunnit läsa ca 80 sidor och har en känsla av att den här boken är den bästa jag läst i ämnet hittills.
Dennett lovar att han inte skall undvika de uppenbara konflikterna mellan evolutionsteorin och religion och jag hoppas han håller vad han lovar. De böcker jag läst hittills har inte riktigt tagit upp detta ämne.
"This book, then, is for those who agree that the only meaning of life worth caring about is one that can withstand our best efforts to examine it."
"Darwin´s dangerous idea is that Design can emerge from mere Order via an algorithmic process that makes no use of pre-existing Mind. Skeptics have hoped to show that at least somewhere in this process, a helping hand (more accurately, a helping Mind) must have been provided - a skyhook to do some of the lifting. In their attempts to prove a role for skyhooks, they have often discovered cranes: products of earlier algorithmic processes that can amplify teh power of the basic Darwinian algorithm, making the process locally swifter and more efficient in a nonmiraculous way. Good reductionists suppose that all Design can be explained without skyhooks; greedy reductionists suppose it can all be explained without cranes."
