The biologist and the philosopher meet up to talk about God, evolution, incest, and of course, ants.

An interesting conversation, indeed. Notwithstanding that I got lost about half-way through despite my numerous tries — lack of appropriate background, maybe. I am going to have to revisit later, but here are two points that I think are worth recording:
1. On the history of philosophy, D.D:

It really is important to know the history of philosophy if you’re going to do philosophy, and the reason is actually very simple. The history of philosophy is a history of very tempting mistakes, and the people that we study in the history of philosophy—Plato and Aristotle and Kant and all the rest—they were not dummies. They were really smart people and they made stunning errors. These are very tempting mistakes. So you really have to learn the history of philosophy if you’re going to do it well. Or you have to learn some of it. Because otherwise you just reinvent the wheel. You end up falling in the same old traps.

2. On evolution; on the rarity of sociality (as a study case for the rarity of creativity), E.W:

Evolutionary theory is unique in all of science in that it’s a theory of things that almost never happen. Every birth in every lineage is a potential speciation event, but almost none of them are. The whole biosphere depends on these things that almost never happen. Mutations are almost never good. But it’s the ones that are advantageous that do all the work. So it’s tempting to ask a question like the one that you’ve just asked about what sociality doesn’t emerge more often. Well, I think they answer may just be, don’t think there is a reason why more of them don’t, because like everything else in evolution, this is a case of something that almost never happens. But when it does, amazing things result, and one should simply get used to the fact that you don’t have to explain why it doesn’t happen. You only have to show the sufficient conditions, and then every now and then they arise.