# Quote — Daniel Dennett, Darwin's Dangerous Idea

> The fundamental core of contemporary Darwinism, the theory of DNA-based reproduction and evolution, is now beyond dispute among scientists. It demonstrates its power every day, contributing crucially to the explanation of planet-sized facts of geology and meteorology, through middle-sized facts of ecology and agronomy, down to the latest microscopic facts of genetic engineering. It unifies all of biology and the history of our planet into a single grand story. Like Gulliver tied down in Lilliput, it is unbudgable, not because of some one or two huge chains of argument that might — hope against hope — have weak links in them, but because it is securely tied by thousands of threads of evidence anchoring it to virtually every other area of human knowledge. New discoveries may conceivably lead to dramatic, even "revolutionary" shifts in the Darwinian theory, but the hope that it will be "refuted" by some shattering breakthrough is about as reasonable as the hope that we will return to a geocentric vision and discard Copernicus.

- Author: [Daniel Dennett](https://www.leafyquotes.com/daniel-dennett.md)
- Book: [Darwin's Dangerous Idea](https://www.leafyquotes.com/daniel-dennett/darwins-dangerous-idea.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Daniel_Dennett#Darwin's_Dangerous_Idea_(1995)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/daniel-dennett/darwins-dangerous-idea/the-fundamental-core

## More from this book

> If you have ever asked yourself if there are facts about yourself (about your health, your competence, your prospects) you would rather not know, and decided that there were, you should be prepared to consider seriously the suggestion that the best — perhaps the only — way to ensure that such facts are not imposed on people is by prohibiting investigations likely to discover them.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/daniel-dennett/darwins-dangerous-idea/if-you-have.md)

> Political correctness, in the extreme versions worthy of the name, is antithetical to almost all surprising advances in thought. We might call it eumemics, since it is, like the extreme eugenics of Social Darwinists, an attempt to impose myopically derived standards of safety and goodness on the bounty of nature. Few today — but there are a few — would brand all genetic counseling, all genetic policies, with the condemnatory title of eugenics.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/daniel-dennett/darwins-dangerous-idea/political-correctness-in-the.md)

> [T]he only meaning of life worth caring about is one that can withstand our best efforts to examine it.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/daniel-dennett/darwins-dangerous-idea/t-he-only-meaning.md)