We need to let our children grow up to face the world armed with knowledge, with much more knowledge than we ourselves had at their age. It is scary, but the alternative is worse.
Daniel DennettRead
Wherever there is a design that is highly successful in a broad range of similar environments, it is apt to emerge again and again, independently - the phenomenon known in biology as convergent evolution. I call these designs 'good tricks.'
Interpretation
What this quote means
Great designs in nature often reappear independently in similar contexts, a principle known as convergent evolution.
The quote by Daniel Dennett suggests that certain successful designs arise repeatedly across different contexts due to their inherent effectiveness, much like the biological principle of convergent evolution where different species develop similar traits in response to similar challenges. He refers to these effective designs as 'good tricks,' highlighting the idea that useful solutions tend to recur in various forms across nature and invention.
Themes
DesignConvergent EvolutionBiologySuccessNature
In practice
Example use cases
During a talk on innovation, one could use this quote to illustrate how effective solutions surface across various fields.
More from Daniel Dennett
All quotes →Philosophers are never quite sure what they are talking about - about what the issues really are - and so often it takes them rather a long time to recognize that someone with a somewhat different approach (or destination, or starting point) is making a contribution.
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Words have a genealogy and it's easier to trace the evolution of a single word than the evolution of a language.
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Some philosophers can't bear to say simple things, like "Suppose a dog bites a man." They feel obliged instead to say, "Suppose a dog d bites a man m at time t," thereby demonstrating their unshakable commitment to logical rigor, even though they don't go on to manipulate any formulae involving d, m, and t.
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As every scuba diver knows, panic is your worst enemy: when it hits, your mind starts to thrash and you are likely to do something really stupid and self-destructive.
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