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Books

No Hookers in the Sky for Dennett

Les Reid reviews Darwin’s Dangerous Idea by Daniel C. Dennett.

This book is awesome in its scope. It is philosophy in the grand style, observing and speculating on life, the universe and the whole damn thing. Fortunately, however, it is not written in the grand style, but is instead jokey, informal, observant, orderly, helpful and, in places, abrasive and polemical – in short, very readable. You are climbing an Everest of ideas, but Dennett is such an accomplished guide that the climb is exhilarating, rather than exhausting.

The task that Dennett sets himself is to formulate a framework of ideas, a World-view, which will run without gaps all the way from the basic chemical reactions of the pre-biological era, right through to the most complex creations of the human mind.

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