The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America.(Review) (book review)

The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America, by Louis Menand.

Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 480 pages, $27.00.

Not long ago the philosopher Daniel Dennett called Darwinism--the theory of evolution by means of natural selection--"the best idea ever." It is certainly one of the most consequential. As an explanation of an enormous range of biological and cultural phenomena and, perhaps more important, as a mode of explanation, it has altered the intellectual landscape decisively. Even Karl Marx, only a few years after the publication of On the Origin of Species, ...