Universal acid is a liquid so corrosive that it will eat through anything! But what do you keep it in? It dissolves glass bottles and stainless-steel canisters as readily as paper bags. What would happen if you somehow came upon or created a dollop of universal acid? Would the whole planet eventually be destroyed? What would it leave in its wake? After everything had been transformed by its encounter with universal acid, what would the world look like? Little did I realize that in a few years I would encounter an idea Darwin’s idea—bearing an unmistakable likeness to universal acid: it eats through just about every traditional concept, and leaves in its wake a revolutionized worldview, with most of the old landmarks still recognizable, but transformed in fundamental ways.Darwin’s idea is a revolutionary idea, no doubt about it, but it does not destroy what we value in all these things; it puts them on better foundations, and unites them gracefully with the rest of knowledge. For centuries “the arts and humanities” have been considered not just separate from the sciences but somehow protected from the invasive examinations science engages in, but this traditional isolation is not the best way to preserve what we love. Trying to hide our treasures behind a veil of mystery prevents us from finding a proper anchoring for them in the physical world. It is a common-enough mistake, especially in philosophy.
Source:
Philosopher Daniel Dennett’s Book Intuition Pumps
