When comparing the time scales of genetic and cultural evolution, it is useful to bear in mind that we today… — Daniel Dennett
When comparing the time scales of genetic and cultural evolution, it is useful to bear in mind that we today — every one of us — can easily understand many ideas that were simply unthinkable by the geniuses in our grandparents' generation!
Source: Wikiquote · CC BY-SA 4.0
More from this book
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.
[T]he only meaning of life worth caring about is one that can withstand our best efforts to examine it.
It is not "scientism" to concede the objectivity and precision of good science, any more than it is history worship to concede that Napoleon did once rule in France and the Holocaust actually happened. Those who fear the facts will forever try to discredit the fact-finders.
