Daniel Dennett Quotes About Purpose

Quotes about: Purpose

• 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.

  Daniel Dennett

  Ideas, Space, Awards

  "Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life". Book by Daniel Dennett, 1995.

• In the beginning, there were no reasons; there were only causes. Nothing had a purpose, nothing has so much as a function; there was no teleology in the world at all.

  Daniel Dennett

  Religion, Purpose, World

  Daniel C. Dennett (2017). “Consciousness Explained”, Hachette UK

• Whereas religions may serve a benign purpose by letting many people feel comfortable with the level of morality they themselves can attain, no religion holds its member to the high standards of moral responsibility that the secular world of science and medicine does!

  Daniel Dennett

  Responsibility, Medicine, People

  "Thank Goodness!" by Daniel C. Dennett, www.edge.org. November 2, 2006.

• If I were to give a prize for the single best idea anybody ever had, I'd give it to Darwin for the idea of natural selection - ahead of Newton, ahead of Einstein - because his idea unites the two most disparate features of our universe: the world of purposeless, meaningless matter and motion, particles jostling on the one side, and the world of meaning and purpose, design on the other.

  Daniel Dennett

  Ideas, Two, Giving

  "Big Thinkers on Evolution". NOVA-PBS, www.pbs.org. October 6, 2009.

• The traditional view of purpose says it comes from on high, from God, from the Creator. Darwin's idea of natural selection makes people uncomfortable because it reverses the direction of tradition. Whereas people used to think of meaning coming from on high and being ordained from the top down, now we have Darwin saying, "No, all of this design can happen, all of this purpose can emerge from the bottom up without any direction at all."

  Daniel Dennett

  Thinking, Views, Ideas

  "Big Thinkers on Evolution". "NOVA", www.pbs.org. October 6, 2009.

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