We need to let our children grow up to face the world armed with knowledge, with much more knowledge than we ourselves had at their age. It is scary, but the alternative is worse.
Daniel DennettRead
Let me lay my cards on the table. If I were to give an award for the single best idea anyone ever had, I'd give it to Darwin, ahead of even Newton or Einstein and everyone else. In a single stroke, the idea of evolution by natural selection unifies the realm of life, meaning, and purpose with the realm of space and time, cause and effect, mechanism and physical law. It is not just a wonderful idea. It is a dangerous idea.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote emphasizes the significance of Darwin's theory of evolution as a transformative and unifying concept in understanding life and the universe.
In this quote, Daniel Dennett highlights the revolutionary impact of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection, suggesting it holds greater importance than other monumental ideas by figures like Newton or Einstein. By intertwining the understanding of life with fundamental concepts of space, time, and physical laws, Darwin's idea challenges existing beliefs and prompts critical reflection on our existence, thereby being labeled as both enlightening and potentially threatening.
Themes
DarwinEvolutionNatural SelectionScienceLifePurposeUnity
In practice
Example use cases
In a lecture about the history of science.
More from Daniel Dennett
All quotes →Philosophers are never quite sure what they are talking about - about what the issues really are - and so often it takes them rather a long time to recognize that someone with a somewhat different approach (or destination, or starting point) is making a contribution.
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Words have a genealogy and it's easier to trace the evolution of a single word than the evolution of a language.
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The secret of happiness is: Find something more important than you are and dedicate your life to it.
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Some philosophers can't bear to say simple things, like "Suppose a dog bites a man." They feel obliged instead to say, "Suppose a dog d bites a man m at time t," thereby demonstrating their unshakable commitment to logical rigor, even though they don't go on to manipulate any formulae involving d, m, and t.
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As every scuba diver knows, panic is your worst enemy: when it hits, your mind starts to thrash and you are likely to do something really stupid and self-destructive.
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