Natural Selection and Differential Reproduction
Philosopher Daniel Dennett talks about differential reproduction, which he says is the key idea of natural selection. With differential reproduction, some copies of the original are a little less perfect than others. Those that are less perfect tend...
What is Human Nature?: Biology's Challenge to Traditional Western View of Human Nature
In the 17th and 18th centuries, scientists are fascinated with collecting specimens and classifying species. However, It will be Charles Darwin who creates a new picture of nature. In the 1830s he travels to the Galapagos Islands to research both li...
Charles Darwin and the Problem of Continuity
Philosopher Daniel Dennett talks about the Darcy Thompson statement that "everything is the way it is because it got that way." Calling that a very fundamental Darwinian idea, Professor Dennett explains that it means everything either was something ...
Design and Natural Selection
Philosopher Daniel Dennett talks about Darwin and the notion of intelligent design. Rather than conclude, as did William Paley, that intelligent design requires a designer, Dennett applies Darwinian natural selection to the design process, arguing t...
Does God Exist?: God's Existence and Darwinian Evolution
Darwin's theory of evolution contends that through a process of natural selection organisms that can adapt survive; the rest perish. What was thought to be the work of a Supreme Being is now an evolutionary process. There is a difference between ord...
Codes of Life: Evolutionary Psychology and Adaptation
Genetic predispositions help explain both our shared human nature as well as our individual differences. Evolutionary psychology takes a broader view, over a longer period of time, to determine the strategies that are useful for preserving the spe...
Natural Selection and Distant Ancestors
Philosopher Daniel Dennett talks about the conventional wisdom before Darwin that species were fixed eternally. With Darwin came the notion that species that may be very different now have a common ancestor from the very distant past.
God, Design, and Cosmology
Philosopher Daniel Dennett looks at arguments for the existence of God which are based on the need to explain how the replicating entities required for natural selected came to be.
The Darwinian Revolution
Philosopher John Searle talks about what he considers to be the three primary contributions of Charles Darwin. At the time Darwin lived, Professor Searle explains, his most influential idea was that natural selection, rather than intelligent design,...