Quotes About Evolution

Today only a handful of apes survive— the orangutan and gibbon in Asia, and the chimpanzee, bonobo, and gorilla in Africa— and most of them are hanging in the balance, thanks to human pressures. During the Miocene, however, as many as one hundred ape species flourished throughout the Old World. One of these gave rise to the human lineage.

Like Orrorin, Ard. kadabba has been held up as an early biped. However, the hypothesis that Ard. kadabba traveled on two legs hinges on a single left foot phalanx, or toe bone, that has been consigned to this species. The bone's joint tilts upward like a human's rather than downward like a chimp's— a configuration that enables humans to "toe off" when walking.

East Africa, with its natural rock exposures and relatively tolerable climate, has long been the preferred hunting ground of paleoanthropologists. Few have dared venture beyond that comfort zone.

Should further discoveries bear this out, the robust australopithecines will stand as a rare example of parallel evolution, in which members of two descendant lineages of A. afarensis independently evolved similar adaptations, presumably in response to environmental change.

Incidentally because the gastrointestinal track is metabolically greedy any reduction in its size would have freed up energy for other demands, such as those of a bigger brain.

Exaptation, in which a trait evolved for one function can co-opt a new function, is commonplace in nature. We use sex to procreate, but also to bond, play, heal, and enjoy pleasure.

Conscious realism makes a bold claim: consciousness, not spacetime and its objects, is fundamental reality and is properly described as a network of conscious agents.31 To earn its keep, conscious realism must do serious work ahead. It must ground a theory of quantum gravity, explain the emergence of our spacetime interface and its objects, explain the appearance of Darwinian evolution within that interface, and explain the evolutionary emergence of human psychology.

Steven Pinker sums up the argument well: "We are organisms, not angels, and our minds are organs, not pipelines to the truth. Our minds evolved by natural selection to solve problems that were life-and-death matters to our ancestors, not to commune with correctness."36

In the last 20,000 years, our brains have shrunk 10 percent—from 1,500 cubic centimeters down to 1,350—a loss of the volume of a tennis ball.

Or perhaps we were short-changed by evolution, and lack the concepts needed to understand the relationship between brains and consciousness. Cats can't do calculus and monkeys can't do quantum theory, so why assume that Homo sapiens can demystify consciousness?

Once we know the rules that human vision uses to decode messages about fitness, we can use those rules to send the messages we want. Consider jeans.

This broader notion of fitness is called "inclusive fitness" to distinguish it from the notion of "personal fitness," which we have discussed until now.50 The two notions are not at odds. Inclusive fitness simply recognizes a broader spectrum of strategies by which genes muscle into the next generation.

Steven Pinker sums up the argument well: "We are organisms, not angels, and our minds are organs, not pipelines to the truth. Our minds evolved by natural selection to solve problems that were life-and-death matters to our ancestors, not to commune with correctness.

Perception may seem effortless, but in fact it requires considerable energy. Each precious calorie you burn on perception is a calorie you must find and take from its owner—perhaps a potato or an irate wildebeest. Calories can be difficult and dangerous to procure, so evolution has shaped our senses to be misers.

We encounter a startling "Fitness-Beats-Truth" (FBT) theorem, which states that evolution by natural selection does not favor true perceptions—it routinely drives them to extinction. Instead, natural selection favors perceptions that hide the truth and guide useful action.

The sclera—the white of the eye—affects attraction. No other primates have white scleras. Their scleras are dark, hiding their direction of gaze from predators, and from members of their own species—for whom a stare can be a threat.40 The white sclera of the human eye advertises gaze direction, making it a tool for social communication. It also advertises emotion and health.

I majored in Creative Writing in college. Then I got over it.

Arthur Schopenhauer once said, "All truth passes through three stages: First, it is ridiculed; second, it is violently opposed; and third, it is accepted as self-evident.

If buyer's remorse ever accomplished anything in this world," Max said, "we'd all still be living in caves.

You wanna know what's happening to New York?" he asked. "I tell you what you do. You go to a used-magazine store, you look at the covers of science fiction magazines from the thirties. That's what's happening to New York.

When I was young, my language wore coats and shirts and trousers, neckties, bespoke shoes. In my lifetime as a writer I have cast off layer after layer of clothing in pursuit of nudity.

In the eighties and nineties, a New England monthly named Yankee paid me $4,000 four times a year, each time for an essay of a thousand words. Playboy paid an enormous sum in 1975 for my essay "Fathers Playing Catch with Sons," and Reader's Digest reprinted it. In the new century, fees have considerably lessened. A few years ago, a diminished Playboy printed three new essays of mine, and the three stipends together amounted to less than 1975's single check.

When the first fossils began to be found in eastern Africa, in the late 1950s, I thought, what a wonderful marriage this was, biology and anthropology. I was around 16 years old when I made this particular choice of academic pursuit.

Tradition is a set of solutions for which we have forgotten the problems. Throw away the solution and you get the problem back. Sometimes the problem has mutated or disappeared. Often it is still there as strong as it ever was.