Two books related to evolution by the philosopher Daniel C. Dennett.

Kinds of Minds.

Presented in a lingusitic style that can probably only be easily digested by fellow philosophers, but admirably covers the ground that needs to be covered in presenting the idea that brains and their associated consciosnesses can come in all degrees of complexity.





DDI
Darwin's Dangerous Idea. I hope I never tire of saying it: Dennett is worth his weight in gold. Another public service book that may be able to set straight some people in the soft sciences about evolution. This book may be too painful for some biologists to read. Dennett comes too close to Darwin worship for my taste. Dennett does point out that Darwin was shy about mentioning "catostropic change", but otherwise Darwin is depicted as walking on water. When Dennett gets into details of the biology, biologists must be philosophical and satisfied that there is one philosopher in the world who is even capable of pulling real biological examples out of his encyclopedic mind. Example: in Chapter 12, part 4, on page 353 of my copy,

Hopefully Dennett has not coined an infectious meme that will have non-biologists forever opening and closing the homeobox! If you really want to learn something about "the homeobox", its role in animal development, and its conservation throughout the animal kingdom, check out online sources such as the The Interactive Fly and the people who are studying these genes. These master control genes are now giving biologists a chance to explain how simple mutations can cause huge non-Darwinian leaps through phenotype space. Darwin didn't know about genes and can be forgiven for not seeing that organisms can change phenotype rapidly by means of simple genetic changes and even result in something other than a "monster". A nice example of speciation by relatively simple mutation involves the well-studied insect Drosophila and the period gene. See the review by Jeff Hall (1994. The mating of a fly. Science 264: 1702-1714) for some background on fly sex. See my discussion of Chris Wills' book, Runaway Brain, for more on this example. (By the way, Wills even gives a reasonable if all to brief account of homeobox genes.) Read Dennett for his philosophy, not as a final source of information about biology.


"Darwin's Danderous Idea is a meme that is in competition with traditional memes that concern where we came from. Go to this page for analysis of Dennett and memes.

Go here for my review of Dennett's book, "Darwin's Danderous Idea".

Go here for some comments on Dennett's book about free will, Elbow Room.


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John William Schmidt