Darwin's Dangerous Idea by Daniel C. Dennett

Sorry that you don’t exist as much more than a ‘thing’ (and not even really that, most of you are just kind of there as non-entities I will never actually encounter, but even if I do you are still only in my head, so you’re not even things. There is nothing that can be said to make them see that they could possibly be wrong about the world being created roughly 6,500 years ago, but that is fine because I believe the world was actually created 10 seconds ago, and it was created all for me, with everyone and everything in it, including all my memories supplied just to give me and my own personal universe a history, which of course it is lacking since it has only existed for about a minute and a half now. That same 47 percent of the population that doesn’t believe in evolution also do not believe in the Sumerians or Dinosaurs.

Roughly 47% of Americans believe the theories in this book to be complete and utter bullshit at best, and at worst the work of the devil. He is a Humanist Laureate of the International Academy of Humanism and a Fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry.ġ. He was the co-founder (1985) and co-director of the Curricular Software Studio at Tufts University, and has helped to design museum exhibits on computers for the Smithsonian Institution, the Museum of Science in Boston, and the Computer Museum in Boston. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1987.

He has received two Guggenheim Fellowships, a Fulbright Fellowship, and a Fellowship at the Center for Advanced Studies in Behavioral Science. In 2001 he was awarded the Jean Nicod Prize, giving the Jean Nicod Lectures in Paris. from Christ Church, Oxford, where he studied under the ordinary language philosopher Gilbert Ryle.ĭennett gave the John Locke lectures at the University of Oxford in 1983, the Gavin David Young Lectures at Adelaide, Australia, in 1985, and the Tanner Lecture at Michigan in 1986, among many others.

in philosophy from Harvard University in 1963, where he was a student of W.V.O. Dennett is a noted atheist, avid sailor, and advocate of the Brights movement.ĭennett received his B.A. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy at Tufts University. He is the co-director of the Center for Cognitive Studies and the Austin B. Daniel Clement Dennett III is a prominent philosopher whose research centers on philosophy of mind, science, and biology, particularly as they relate to evolutionary biology and cognitive science.

Darwin's Dangerous Idea by Daniel C. Dennett