Dennis Dutton is shown Aug. 3, 2002, at the University of Canterbury in Wellington, New Zealand, with his popular website Arts & Letters Daily. Dutton died Tuesday. (Martin Woodhall/Christchurch Star/Associated Press)

Denis Dutton, a New Zealand-based academic who was founder of the pioneering Arts & Letters Daily website, has died. He was 66.

Dutton died Tuesday of complications of prostate cancer, his family said.

Arts & Letters Daily is a website that pulls together links about literature, art, philosophy and science — all Dutton's passions.

It was a groundbreaking website, in part for being an early aggregator of many sources, when Dutton created it in 1998. In 1999, London's Guardian newspaper declared it the best website in the world.

Dutton wrote and edited the cover page, which resembles an 18th-century newspaper broadsheet, until he became too sick to work.

"Denis was the creative force behind Arts & Letters Daily and wrote all the items on the page himself, even when he was on vacation," said Phil Semas, president and editor in chief of The Chronicle of Higher Education, which bought the website in 2002.

'Nearly irreplaceable'

"He is nearly irreplaceable. Even so, we intend to continue Arts & Letters Daily in the spirit in which Denis created and nurtured it."

Dutton was born in California on Feb. 9, 1944, and studied philosophy at the University of California Santa Barbara.

He taught at several U.S. universities, including the University of Michigan, Dearborn and the University of California. In 1976, he founded the academic journal Philosophy and Literature, where he criticized other academics for adopting a pedantic writing style that no one else could understand.

In 1984, he became a philosophy professor at Canterbury University in Christchurch, New Zealand.

When he launched Arts & Letters Daily, he continued to champion sprightly writing and another of his interests, freedom of information.

Dutton told Salon he hoped the site would prompt everyone to explore fresh ideas and challenge preconceived notions.

Unusual course

"A vegetarian gun-control advocate who opposes capital punishment is fine," he told Salon.com in a 2000 interview. "But what pricks my interest more is the vegetarian anti-capital punishment cowboy who carries three shotguns displayed in the back window of the cab of his truck."

Dutton's book, The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure, and Human Evolution, argues that art appreciation is not a result of education and exposure, but a natural evolutionary adaptation.

He taught an unusual course at the University of Canterbury titled "Darwin's Dangerous Idea" that explores how Darwin challenged conventional thinking and the impact of his ideas on philosophy throughout the 20th century.

He was a passionate defender of public radio and served on the board of public broadcaster Radio New Zealand.

Dutton was also a founding member of the New Zealand Skeptics Society, which gives out the Bent Spoon Award for "the most gullible or naive reporting in the paranormal or pseudo-science area."

He is survived by his wife, Margit, and two children, Sonia and Ben.

With files from The Associated Press