General Science
Darwin's Dangerous Idea - Evolution and the Meanings of Life
Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 1996, 586pp, 1st ed.
One of the best descriptions of the nature and implications of Darwinian evolution ever written. Dennett argues that Darwinian processes are the central organising force in the Universe. Dennett asserts that natural selection is a blind and algorithmic process which is sufficiently powerful to account for the generation and evolution of life including the ins and outs of human minds and societies.
Table of contents
| Preface | 11 | |
| Pt. I | Starting in the Middle | |
| Ch. 1 | Tell Me Why | 17 |
| Ch. 2 | An Idea Is Born | 35 |
| Ch. 3 | Universal Acid | 61 |
| Ch. 4 | The Tree of Life | 85 |
| Ch. 5 | The Possible and the Actual | 104 |
| Ch. 6 | Threads of Actuality in Design Space | 124 |
| Pt. II | Darwinian Thinking in Biology | |
| Ch. 7 | Priming Darwin's Pump | 149 |
| Ch. 8 | Biology Is Engineering | 187 |
| Ch. 9 | Searching for Quality | 229 |
| Ch. 10 | Bully for Brontosaurus | 262 |
| Ch. 11 | Controversies Contained | 313 |
| Pt. III | Mind, Meaning, Mathematics, and Morality | |
| Ch. 12 | The Cranes of Culture | 335 |
| Ch. 13 | Losing Our Minds to Darwin | 370 |
| Ch. 14 | The Evolution of Meanings | 401 |
| Ch. 15 | The Emperor's New Mind, and Other Fables | 428 |
| Ch. 16 | On the Origin of Morality | 452 |
| Ch. 17 | Redesigning Morality | 494 |
| Ch. 18 | The Future of an Idea | 511 |
| Appendix | 523 | |
| Bibliography | 525 | |
| Index | 551 |