Darwin's Dangerous Idea (thing)

This phenomenal book (1995 National Book Award Finalist) is perhaps one of the best books ever written on the theory of evolution. Beyond giving an easy to understand description of the theory, Daniel Dennett examines it from a variety of different perspectives, and gives us different ways of understanding its implications and significance from the standpoint of History, Computer Science, Philosphy, Design, and Biology, just to name a few.

Some ideas he presents that I found to be especially interesting are:

• Natural Selection operates as an algorithm that given enough time and simply the regularity of physics, will produce highly adapted entities (and he goes into detail about the nature of algorithms, be they on a computer or in the world itself)
• Darwin's theory changed the Great Chain of Being from one that required an entity with a mind (usually God) to create things that were structured and purposeful to a more bottom-up conception
• Similarly, how a mindless process can develop things that are purposeful and have design (for example, eyes are for seeing)
• Concepts of design space (the animals we have now are only a subset of all possible animals; also makes a beautiful connection to a short story of Jorge Luis Borges)
• How memes have played a role in evolution

and so on, in many more concepts that I can name. It is a fascinating book that ties these concepts together in a fabric that helps you better understand not only evolution but its ties to a plethora of other subjects, and most importantly, how to think about these kinds of concepts, how to integrate them, and finally how to make them meaningful. It is very reminiscent of Hofstadter's monumental work, Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid.