Editing Darwin's Dangerous Idea (section)

===Part I: Starting in the Middle===
"Starting in the Middle", Part I of ''Darwin's Dangerous Idea'', gets its name from a quote by [[Willard Van Orman Quine]]: "Analyze theory-building how we will, we all must start in the middle. Our conceptual firsts are middle-sized, middle-distance objects, and our introduction to them and to everything comes midway in the cultural evolution of the race."

The first chapter "Tell Me Why" is named after a song.

{{Blockquote|text=
Tell me why the stars do shine,<br>
Tell me why the ivy twines, <br>
Tell me why the sky's so blue.<br>
Then I will tell you just why I love you.

Because God made the stars to shine,<br>
Because God made the ivy twine,<br>
Because God made the sky so blue.<br>
Because God made you, that's why I love you.}}

Before [[Charles Darwin]], and still today, a majority of people see [[God]] as the [[ultimate cause]] of all design, or the ultimate answer to 'why<!-- this should have an article too... -->?' questions. [[John Locke]] argued for the primacy of [[mind]] before [[matter]],<ref>{{cite book |title=[[An Essay Concerning Human Understanding]] |last=Locke |first=John |author-link=John Locke |year=1690 |location=London }}</ref> and [[David Hume]], while exposing problems with Locke's view,<ref>{{cite book |title=[[Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion]] |last=Hume |first=David |author-link=David Hume |year=1779 |location=London }}</ref> could not see any alternative.

[[Image:Cranes from Encyclopédie.jpg|thumb|''Darwin's Dangerous Idea'' makes extensive use of [[crane (machine)|crane]]s as an analogy.]]
Darwin provided just such an alternative: [[evolution]].<ref>{{cite book |title=[[On the Origin of Species]] |last=Darwin |first=Charles |author-link=Charles Darwin |year=1859 |publisher=John Murray |location=London }}</ref> Besides providing [[evidence of common descent]], he introduced a [[mechanism (philosophy)|mechanism]] to explain it: [[natural selection]]. According to Dennett, natural selection is a mindless, mechanical and [[algorithm]]ic process—Darwin's dangerous idea. The third chapter introduces the concept of "skyhooks" and "cranes" (see below). He suggests that resistance to [[Darwinism]] is based on a desire for skyhooks, which do not really exist. According to Dennett, good [[reductionism|reductionists]] explain apparent [[design]] without skyhooks; [[greedy reductionism|greedy reductionists]] try to explain it without cranes.

Chapter 4 looks at the tree of life, such as how it can be visualized and some crucial events in life's history. The next chapter concerns the possible<!--  we should have an article on this, no? --> and the actual, using the 'Library of [[Gregor Mendel|Mendel]]' (the space of all [[logical possibility|logically possible]] [[genome]]s) as a conceptual aid.

In the last chapter of part I, Dennett treats human [[social artifact|artifacts]] and [[culture]] as a branch of a unified Design Space. [[Common descent|Descent]] or [[homology (anthropology)|homology]] can be detected by shared design features that would be unlikely to appear independently. However, there are also "Forced Moves" or "Good Tricks" that will be discovered repeatedly, either by natural selection (see [[convergent evolution]]) or human investigation.