Daniel Dennetts Darwins Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of

Daniel Dennett's Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life Science can give us as good a moral code as any religion. Or so Daniel Dennett claims in his book, Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life. Dennett provides the tools to explain human morality, and inadvertently leads the way to the conclusion (which he does not share) that science can clarify how human morality came about, but not serve as a substitute or model for moral codes, religious and secular alike. It all begins with Dennett's assertion that everything- everything- is a product of an algorithmic process, which comes about as a result of random change. By definition these algorithmic processes, evolution included, are "matter first". Dennett uses a metaphor of "cranes"; that new changes in species or anything else are made possible by what already existed in the material world. When speaking about life it is also usefully explained by considering adaptation to be, in practice, exaptation. Nothing in the Darwinian story of the world suggests that anything about better or worse, or for that matter, good and evil. This is the main point commonly used to dispel notions of Social Darwinism. But it, in my mind, is not sufficient. A few people are doing better in the world than others, and it is not because they are better than the others, or that the others are inferior, it just happened that way because of social circumstances. It has nothing to do with biology. So what! Science here offers no ethical insight; it only prompts indifference. Even if Darwinism is no justification for social injustice, it does nothing to suggest that there is an urgent need for social change. At worst, if one does not take away from this a w... ...reate stories and go beyond nature. These stories themselves are often the motivation for what we determine to be evil upon examining an alternate story, but we do not have a choice about whether or not we tell stories at all. That is in our nature. Alternately, without our stories we would not experience good and beautiful. The most dissatisfying aspect of a matter-first explanation of morality is that it absolves us from any responsibility for how we impact the natural world and other human beings. This could come as a welcome relief, after considering the incomprehensible responsibility of being an agent of creation. But consider again all the hope and possibilities that lie in being able to tell stories that change the world! Works Cited Dennett, Daniel C. Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life. New York, NY: Simon&Schuster, 1995.