If I were to give an award for the single best idea anyone has ever had, I'd give it to Darwin, ahead of Newton and Einstein. And everyone else. In a single stroke, the idea of evolution by natural selection unifies the realm of life, meaning, and purpose with the realm of space and time, cause and effect, mechanism and physical law. But it is not just a wonderful scientific idea. It is a dangerous idea.

But if we ask where precisely in the brain that point of view is located, the simple assumptions that work so well on larger scales of space and time break dow…

My admiration for Darwin's magnificent idea is unbounded, but I, too, cherish many of the ideas and ideals that it seems to challenge, and want to protect them…

Wherever there is a conscious mind, there is a point of view. A conscious mind is an observer, who takes in the information that is available at a particular (…