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You're listening to the Partially examined life episode 168 Part 2 on Charles Darwin's

the origin of species. We've gotten out quite a bit of the theory and got a little bit into some of

the difficulties or modern related topics that are still under discussion. So Seth,

what's the thing that's knowing at you from this reading that you want us to talk more about?

I'm trying to think of a diplomatic way of saying this.

I think I understand why this was a big deal at the time, but why is it a big deal now?

His dangerous idea has swept the nation. It's swept the intellectual world. We do have people

like Dan Dennett that write books directly or dockets that take it straight up.

I just want to say, Seth, why is it a big deal in the sense of scientifically or why is it a big deal

for people who object to it? What are they says written by? What do you mean exactly, Seth?

So what I mean exactly is reading, slash listening to it. The ideas don't seem radical to me.

Like the idea that organisms adapt to environmental conditions with the wild card of mutations thrown in

and that the ones that are best adapted have a tendency to survive and procreate and the ones that

are less well adapted have a tendency not to. I mean, if you are not tied to some kind of

religious concept of the divinity and if you don't feel somehow validated by having been a product of

that process that you need somehow to have God reach down and touch you with the Divine Spark,

what is so exciting about all of this? I've been playing around with a hypothesis that Darwinism

fundamentally makes over your way of thinking about the world in the same way that maybe the

thought of Freud or Marx does, that you read folks like Denet talking about religion, talking about

ethics. You know, we had Pat Churchland on. She's definitely a neo-Darwinist of some sort that

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