Now that I am most of the way through _Darwin's Dangerous Idea_, and have
seen how Dennett rips into Gould, I am amused that I recommended Gould to
you. The recommendation stands, though, if you haven't read his books.
Dennett is an extremely clever person, and even Gould, who is also quite
clever, can't keep up at his pace. I've been finding Dennett's book
extremely mentally challenging and thought-provoking also. I particularly
like his point that there is no one meaning or purpose for a given
adaptation; it's dependent on context and perspective, and well-described
as "what the adaptation is good for". That idea and related ones in the
book got me going on chains of things I had very nearly managed to think
of myself in past years. Dennett is great at winkling complex ideas into
the open. And he does a great job of explaining why memetics makes sense
as an approach!
--Eva,
who is 27 years old and is not in school but has lots of teachers, many of
them on the Church of Virus mailing list.