Sublime
An inspiration engine for ideas
Societies, like machines, can display intricate mutual dependence and elaborate divisions of labor; but, unlike machines, societies are not designed. Cooperation and coordination cannot be assumed; when present, they must be explained.
David Haig • From Darwin to Derrida
Then, in the ‘Red Notebook’ and its successors, he processed the arguments and ideas which would, in the six books he published in the decade after his voyage, make him one of the era’s most respected scientists – and then, in On the Origin of Species, change the way we think of life. All germinating from a pile of field notebooks that fit comforta
... See moreRoland Allen • The Notebook
A central debate within Darwinism concerns the unit that is actually selected: what kind of entity is it that survives, or does not survive, as a consequence of natural selection.
Richard Dawkins • The Selfish Gene
The thesis that we are all nothing more than vehicles for a number of “selfish genes” has accordingly entered deeply into the simian gabble of academic life, where together with materialism and moral relativism it now seems as self-evident as the law of affirmative action.
David Berlinski • The Devil's Delusion
Natural selection has made us a cultural species by altering our development in ways that (1) slowed the growth of our bodies through a shortened infancy and extended childhood but added a growth spurt in adolescence, and (2) altered neurological development in complex ways that make our brain advanced at birth yet both highly expandable and enduri
... See moreJoseph Henrich • The Secret of Our Success
It is the survival of knowledge, and not necessarily of the gene or any other physical object, that is the common factor between replicating and non-replicating genes. So, strictly speaking, it is a piece of knowledge rather than a physical object that is or is not adapted to a certain niche.
David Deutsch • The Fabric of Reality
The prospect of the unlimited creation of knowledge in the future conflicts with creationism by undercutting its motivation. For eventually, with the assistance of what we would consider stupendously powerful computers, any child will be capable of designing and implementing a better, more complex, more beautiful, and also far more moral biosphere
... See moreDavid Deutsch • The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations that Transform The World
“Darwinian Prioritization”