Breaking the spell

Unfortunately, not all noteworthy books are promptly translated by our publishers, and the work of Daniel Dennett Breaking the Spell (2006) belongs to their category. However, this is not a reason to lose sight of a decent book.

I don't want to repeat reviewers whose reviews you can easily find on Wikipedia and on Amazon . I will try to note only some interesting thoughts, especially vividly imprinted in the memory.
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Dennett is a famous American philosopher working in the field of cognitive sciences. As a materialist living in a fairly religious American society, Dennett repeatedly turned to the phenomenon of religion. In the book Breaking the spell, he tries to study religion as a "natural phenomenon" that has developed in humankind for thousands of years in a natural evolutionary way - as in its time, upright walking or speaking.

The idea is that, according to Dennett, the religious worldview (as opposed to the atheistic one) somehow had a positive effect on the survival of the human species, and therefore remained. That, however, does not prevent us from being critical of the current state of affairs.

The book explores the idea of ​​the evolution of elements of human culture (memes), strongly echoing Dawkins books. The author believes that the theory of Darwinian evolution is applicable to the elements of culture (to the same religion): useful elements survive and mutate, harmful ones die out.

Thus, religion also passed a certain path from the primitive beliefs of ancient tribes through the later idea of ​​a single anthropomorphic God to a modern, rather contradictory state (God-as-personality and at the same time God-as-abstract-power).

Perhaps people more prone to religiosity have managed to adapt better. An example from the adjacent area: the doctor-shaman, in fact, introduces the patient into a trance and mobilizes the internal forces of his body to fight the disease. It is logical to assume that those who were more prone to hypnotic influence, were more curable and, therefore, more tenacious. Therefore, many of us are descendants of people prone to hypnotic influence.

If we talk about the present, Dennett criticizes the religious worldview and religious organizations, suggesting that sensible people share the values ​​of the Bright Movement .

In general, the book is written with great humor and is easy to read (not that my review :)). In essence, a serious scientific study of religion as a phenomenon of nature is proposed, and by this the book is original. As an expander highly recommended.

On Amazon, the book costs only 11 dollars.

The author is already familiar to the Russian-speaking reader - first of all, as a co-author of Douglas Hofstadter from the book Mind's I ( Eye of Reason ). In general, that Hofstadter, Dennett are wonderful authors, and the poverty of their Russian-language translations is more than a sad omission. After all, their books can be read one by one.

We can only hope for the enthusiasm of possible translators. In truth, I would have taken it myself, but where can I find so much time :)