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Richard Dawkins summarizes Darwin’s big idea in one sentence: “Given sufficient time, the non-random survival of hereditary entities (which occasionally miscopy) will generate complexity, diversity, beauty, and an illusion of design so persuasive that it is almost impossible to distinguish from deliberate intelligent design.”
Dawkins remarks on the amazing explanatory power of the idea of natural selection. I find reflections of that sort of explanatory power in Adam Smith’s idea that markets work and lead to social welfare gains.
It is interesting that it takes many years of internalizing of a big …