Evolution and Literature Web Paper 2

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Daniel Dennett's book Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life discusses, in great detail, the ramifications of Darwin's theory of evolution on human life and meaning.  While looking over portions of the book again, I found myself wondering more about some of Dennett's ideas and other species of animals.  On page 369, Dennett writes: "The invasion of human brains by culture, in the form of memes, has created human minds, which alone among animals minds can conceive of things distant and future, and formulate alternative goals." (1)  What interests me here is his complete dismissal of other animals as thinking or having culture.  While Dennett certainly makes great, strong points about human culture, even if I do not necessarily agree with him, he jumps stra

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After reading Darwin’s ideas and Dennett’s responses to Darwin’s ideas, I became increasingly interested in their views on mathematics. As a potential math major, I am already a bit more in tune than others may be to the way math is applied to the situations in the books, and I am beginning to look at math in a different light. I believe a large point of this class is to provide a stepping-stone in allowing our minds to be able to perceive our world in multiple ways. Every student in this class views the world in our own way, based on our past experiences and on our personalities. We are a group of individuals and because of that, our perceptions are individual and unique to ourselves only. This idea makes me wonder what the world looks like from one of my classmate’s eyes.

 

         Foundationalism, or the “f-word” as we have come to call it in our class discussions, was defined in class as being an idea or theory that was “grounded, concrete, and observable.” I wasn’t really satisfied with this definition, but I wasn’t ready to throw away the term in favor of another. So I have decided that foundationalism deserves a closer look.
 

 

 

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