Editing Darwin's Dangerous Idea (section)

== Reception ==
In ''[[The New York Review of Books]]'', [[John Maynard Smith]] praised ''Darwin's Dangerous Idea'':

<blockquote>
It is therefore a pleasure to meet a philosopher who understands what Darwinism is about, and approves of it.
Dennett goes well beyond biology. He sees Darwinism as a corrosive acid, capable of dissolving our earlier belief and forcing a reconsideration of much of sociology and philosophy. Although modestly written, this is not a modest book. Dennett argues that, if we understand ''Darwin's dangerous idea'', we are forced to reject or modify much of our current intellectual baggage...<ref>{{cite magazine| url = http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1703| title = New York Review of Books: John Maynard Smith "Genes, Memes, & Minds", 1995| last1 = Smith| first1 = John Maynard}}</ref>
</blockquote>

Writing in the same publication, [[Stephen Jay Gould]] criticised ''Darwin's Dangerous Idea'' for being an "influential but misguided ultra-Darwinian manifesto":

<blockquote>Daniel Dennett devotes the longest chapter in ''Darwin's Dangerous Idea'' to an excoriating caricature of my ideas, all in order to bolster his defense of Darwinian fundamentalism. If an argued case can be discerned at all amid the slurs and sneers, it would have to be described as an effort to claim that I have, thanks to some literary skill, tried to raise a few piddling, insignificant, and basically conventional ideas to "revolutionary" status, challenging what he takes to be the true Darwinian scripture. Since Dennett shows so little understanding of evolutionary theory beyond natural selection, his critique of my work amounts to little more than sniping at false targets of his own construction. He never deals with my ideas as such, but proceeds by hint, innuendo, false attribution, and error.<ref name="gould">{{cite web| url = http://cogweb.ucla.edu/Debate/Gould.html| title = Evolution: The Pleasures of Pluralism<!-- Bot generated title -->}}</ref></blockquote>

Gould was also a harsh critic of Dennett's idea of the "universal [[acid]]" of natural selection and of his subscription to the idea of [[memetics]]; Dennett responded, and the exchange between Dennett, Gould, and [[Robert Wright (journalist)|Robert Wright]] was printed in the ''New York Review of Books''.<ref>{{cite magazine|url= http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1096 |author= Stephen Jay Gould, Daniel Dennett | title= 'Darwinian Fundamentalism': An Exchange |year= 1997}}</ref>

Biologist [[H. Allen Orr]] wrote a critical review emphasizing similar points in the ''[[Boston Review]]''.<ref>{{cite journal|url= https://bostonreview.net/archives/BR21.3/Orr.html | author = H. Allen Orr | title = Dennett's Strange Idea| journal = Boston Review | year = 1996 | number = 3 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170202050252/https://bostonreview.net/archives/BR21.3/Orr.html |archive-date=2 February 2017}}</ref>

The book has also provoked a negative reaction from [[Creationism|creationists]]; [[Frederick Crews]] writes that ''Darwin's Dangerous Idea'' "rivals [[Richard Dawkins]]'s ''[[The Blind Watchmaker]]'' as the creationists' most cordially hated text."<ref>Crews, Frederick. ''Follies of the Wise: Dissenting Essays''. Shoemaker Hoard, 2006, p. 267. {{ISBN|978-1593761011}}</ref>