AMMDI is an open-notebook hypertext writing experiment, authored by Mike Travers aka mtraven. It's a work in progress and some parts are more polished than others. Comments welcome! More.

The phrase "radical Darwinism" isn't a fixed school, but the theme you're describing — Darwinism as a general-purpose logic of explanation that dissolves older ways of thinking — has a well-defined canon. The people who own this idea: Daniel Dennett is the closest fit to what you're remembering. Darwin's Dangerous Idea (1995) argues natural selection is a substrate-neutral algorithm and a " universal acid " that eats through received ideas in biology, mind, culture, and ethics. If your memory has the flavor of "an idea that corrodes everything it touches," it's almost certainly Dennett.

Nonduality is a universal acid, capable of dissolving all thought whatsoever. Like any powerful acid, must be handled carefully. Of course if it is really universal then it can't be contained and will eat through your attempts.

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- You're referencing Derek Parfit's use of "universal acid" — actually no, that's Daniel Dennett's phrase for Darwinism in Darwin's Dangerous Idea (1995): "Darwin's idea... is a universal acid; it eats through just as every traditional concept, and leaves in its wake a revolutionized world-view."
- Your application of the metaphor to nonduality follows the same structure Dennett used, but pointed in a different direction — toward the dissolution of conceptual frameworks generally, including the framework of nonduality itself. The self-undermining quality you note (it dissolves its own container) is a standard observation in Madhyamaka Buddhism — Nagarjuna's Vigrahavyavartani addresses exactly this: the worry that if all propositions are empty, so is the proposition "all propositions are empty."
- Are you asking whether someone has previously applied the specific phrase "universal acid" to nonduality? I'm not aware of a well-known prior instance of that exact combination, but I wouldn't rule it out. Do you have a specific text or author in mind you're trying to trace?

universal acid

15 Aug 2026 - 15 Aug 2026

Learned the term "alkahest" from Philip Pullman's book The Rose Field Alkahest - Wikipedia

The obvious problem with a universal solvent is that no container can hold it. The patch to that is that it only dissolves composites so can be held in a container made from a single alchemical element (eg lead).