The Recipe for Nature Essay -- Daniel Dennett Algorithm Essays

The Recipe for Nature Missing Works Cited Nature is a fluid coalescence of complex magnificence resulting from an algorithmic mastery of simplicity. It is no doubt an awe-inspiring entity that invokes both great curiosity and bafflement in those who attempt to account for its existence and splendor. It is often seen as overly reductionistic, if not  ¡Ã‚ §dangerous ¡Ã‚ ¨, to try to condense the (mindless?) brilliance of nature through any sort of mechanistic or logical means. And here we are faced with what Daniel Dennett calls Darwin ¡Ã‚ ¦s dangerous idea:  ¡Ã‚ §that all the fruits of evolution can be explained as the products of an algorithmic process ¡Ã‚ ¨ (Dennett, 1995 p.60). It is no surprise that this idea might present a problem for the Homo-sapien ego, as it jeopardizes our egocentric concept of  ¡Ã‚ §natural ¡Ã‚ ¨ superiority, as well as fails to satisfy our almost insatiable need to directly account for the expansiveness of the world around us. That is, for many of us it is somehow pessimistic, if not fatalistic, to be satisfied with the idea that we are products of nothing more than a mindless mechanical process (what a dangerous idea this is!) (Dennett, 1995 p.60). The question then inevitably arises: Is Darwin ¡Ã‚ ¦s theory of natural selection really  ¡Ã‚ §powerful enough ¡Ã‚ ¨ to can account for all of the world ¡Ã‚ ¦s design work (i.e., the time, energy and development needed to produce a complex outcome)? (Dennett, 1995) The answer is yes, but only after nature has been unraveled in terms of an algorithmic design and only after the many misunderstandings of Darwin ¡Ã‚ ¦s fundamental ideas have been rectified. If we are to discuss nature and natural selection in terms of being an algorithmic process, we must first define what is meant by an algorithm. An... ...Principle of Accumulation of Design ¡Ã‚ ¨ refers to the fact that the complexity of design work found in nature can be accounted for, not by a definite design process preformed by a designer, but by  ¡Ã‚ §a different sort of process that distributed that work over huge amounts of time, by thriftily conserving the design work that had been accomplished at each stage, so that it didn ¡Ã‚ ¦t have to be done over again ¡Ã‚ ¨ (Dennett, 68). This idea of distributed design work is certainly in line with nature ¡Ã‚ ¦s slow advancement in terms of complexity and  ¡Ã‚ §order of organisms ¡Ã‚ ¨ (Dennett, 69). Furthermore, the Principle of Accumulation of Design does not apply to work done as a result of a single unifying algorithmic process, but to the work done by a  ¡Ã‚ §large class of related algorithms ¡Ã‚ ¨, the conglomeration of which is responsible for the complexity found in nature today (Dennett, 51).