Darwin's Dangerous Idea

<br/><B>Contents</B><br/><br/><I>Preface</I><br/><br/>Part I: Starting in the Middle<br/><br/>CHAPTER ONE<br/><br/><I>Tell Me Why</I><br/><br/>1. Is Nothing Sacred?<br/><br/>2. What, Where, When, Why -- and How?<br/><br/>3. Locke's "Proof" of the Primacy of Mind<br/><br/>4. Hume's Close Encounter<br/><br/>CHAPTER TWO<br/><br/><I>An Idea Is Born</I><br/><br/>1. What Is So Special About Species?<br/><br/>2. Natural Selection -- an Awful Stretcher<br/><br/>3. Did Darwin Explain the Origin of Species?<br/><br/>4. Natural Selection as an Algorithmic Process<br/><br/>5. Processes as Algorithms<br/><br/>CHAPTER THREE<br/><br/><I>Universal Acid</I><br/><br/>1. Early Reactions<br/><br/>2. Darwin's Assault on the Cosmic Pyramid<br/><br/>3. The Principle of the Accumulation of Design<br/><br/>4. The Tools for R and D: Skyhooks or Cranes?<br/><br/>5. Who's Afraid of Reductionism?<br/><br/>CHAPTER FOUR<br/><br/><I>The Tree of Life</I><br/><br/>1. How Should We Visualize the Tree of Life?<br/><br/>2. Color-coding a Species on the Tree<br/><br/>3. Retrospective Coronations: Mitochondrial Eve and Invisible Beginnings<br/><br/>4. Patterns, Oversimplification, and Explanation<br/><br/>CHAPTER FIVE<br/><br/><I>The Possible and the Actual</I><br/><br/>1. Grades of Possibility?<br/><br/>2. The Library of Mendel<br/><br/>3. The Complex Relation Between Genome and Organism<br/><br/>4. Possibility Naturalized<br/><br/>CHAPTER SIX<br/><br/><I>Threads of Actuality in Design Space</I><br/><br/>1. Drifting and Lifting Through Design Space<br/><br/>2. Forced Moves in the Game of Design<br/><br/>3. The Unity of Design Space<br/><br/>Part II: Darwinian Thinking in Biology<br/><br/>CHAPTER SEVEN<br/><br/><I>Priming Darwin' s Pump</I><br/><br/>1. Back Beyond Darwin's Frontier<br/><br/>2. Molecular Evolution<br/><br/>3. The Laws of the Game of Life<br/><br/>4. Eternal Recurrence -- Life Without Foundations?<br/><br/>CHAPTER EIGHT<br/><br/><I>Biology Is Engineering</I><br/><br/>1. The Sciences of the Artificial<br/><br/>2. Darwin Is Dead -- Long Live Darwin!<br/><br/>3. Function and Specification<br/><br/>4. Original Sin and the Birth of Meaning<br/><br/>5. The Computer That Learned to Play Checkers<br/><br/>6. Artifact Hermeneutics, or Reverse Engineering<br/><br/>7. Stuart Kauffman as Meta-Engineer<br/><br/>CHAPTER NINE<br/><br/><I>Searching for Quality</I><br/><br/>1. The Power of Adaptationist Thinking<br/><br/>2. The Leibnizian Paradigm<br/><br/>3. Playing with Constraints<br/><br/>CHAPTER TEN<br/><br/><I>Bully for Brontosaurus</I><br/><br/>1. The Boy Who Cried Wolf?<br/><br/>2. The Spandrel's Thumb<br/><br/>3. Punctuated Equilibrium: A Hopeful Monster<br/><br/>4. Tinker to Evers to Chance: The Burgess Shale Double-Play Mystery<br/><br/>CHAPTER ELEVEN<br/><br/><I>Controversies Contained</I><br/><br/>1. A Clutch of Harmless Heresies<br/><br/>2. Three Losers: Teilhard, Lamarck, and Directed Mutation<br/><br/>3. Cui Bono?<br/><br/>Part III: Mind, Meaning, Mathematics, and Morality<br/><br/>CHAPTER TWELVE<br/><br/><I>The Cranes of Culture</I><br/><br/>1. The Monkey's Uncle Meets the Meme<br/><br/>2. Invasion of the Body-Snatchers<br/><br/>3. Could There Be a Science of Memetics?<br/><br/>4. The Philosophical Importance of Memes<br/><br/>CHAPTER THIRTEEN<br/><br/><I>Losing Out Minds to Darwin</I><br/><br/>1. The Role of Language in Intelligence<br/><br/>2. Chomsky Contra Darwin: Four Episodes<br/><br/>3. Nice Tries<br/><br/>CHAPTER FOURTEEN<br/><br/><I>The Evolution of Meanings</I><br/><br/>1. The Quest for Real Meaning<br/><br/>2. Two Black Boxes<br/><br/>3. Blocking the Exits<br/><br/>4. Safe Passage to the Future<br/><br/>CHAPTER FIFTEEN<br/><br/><I>The Emperor's New Mind, and Other Fables</I><br/><br/>1. The Sword in the Stone<br/><br/>2. The Library of Toshiba<br/><br/>3. The Phantom Quantum-Gravity Computer: Lessons from Lapland<br/><br/>CHAPTER SIXTEEN<br/><br/><I>On the Origin of Morality</I><br/><br/>1. E Pluribus Unum?<br/><br/>2. Friedrich Nietzsche's Just So Stories<br/><br/>3. Some Varieties of Greedy Ethical Reductionism<br/><br/>4. Sociobiology: Good and Bad, Good and Evil<br/><br/>CHAPTER SEVENTEEN<br/><br/><I>Redesigning Morality</I><br/><br/>1. Can Ethics Be Naturalized?<br/><br/>2. Judging the Competition<br/><br/>3. The Moral First Aid Manual<br/><br/>CHAPTER EIGHTEEN<br/><br/><I>The Future of an Idea</I><br/><br/>1. In Praise of Biodiversity<br/><br/>2. Universal Acid: Handle with Care<br/><br/><I>Appendix<br/><br/>Bibliography<br/><br/>Index</I>