From Bacteria To Bach And Back: The Evolution O... Apr 2026

If biological evolution gave us the hardware (our brains), cultural evolution gave us the software. Dennett leans heavily on the concept of —units of cultural information that replicate and evolve just like genes.

Just as Darwin showed that nature can "design" a wing without a designer, and Turing showed a computer can "calculate" without knowing math, Dennett argues that most of life operates on competence without comprehension . From Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution o...

Interestingly, Dennett warns that with the rise of Black Box AI , we might be headed back to a world of competence without comprehension—where our tools are brilliant, but even we don't understand how they work. 4. Consciousness as a User-Interface If biological evolution gave us the hardware (our

We are now "intelligent designers" who can consciously engineer new memes (like scientific theories or technologies). Interestingly, Dennett warns that with the rise of

The most radical shift Dennett proposes is that .