Quotes About Evolution

As has been said about science, sometimes society advances funeral by funeral.

The goals installed in Homo sapiens, that problem-solving, social species, are not just the Four Fs. High on the list are understanding the environment and securing the cooperation of others.

Evolution left us with another burden: our cognitive, emotional, and moral faculties are adapted to individual survival and reproduction in an archaic environment, not to universal thriving in a modern one.

technology expert Kevin Kelly has proposed that "over time, if a technology persists long enough, its costs begin to approach (but never reach) zero.

The authors of Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage, having surveyed the uses of the two forms over six hundred years, conclude, "The traditional rules about shall and will do not appear to have described real usage of these words precisely at any time, although there is no question that they do describe the usage of some people some of the time and that they are more applicable in England than elsewhere.

If the pie we were dividing in 1700 was baked in a standard nine-inch pan, then the one we have today would be more than ten feet in diameter.

In any case, e lengeege weth e smell nember ef vewels cen remeen quete expresseve, so we cannot conclude that a hominid with a restricted vowel space had little language.

Language is not a cultural artifact that we learn the way we learn to tell time or how the federal government works. Instead, it is a distinct piece of the biological makeup of our brains.

Outwitting and second-guessing an organism of approximately equal mental abilities with non-overlapping interests, at best, and malevolent intentions, at worst, makes formidable and ever-escalating demands on cognition. And a cognitive arms race clearly could propel a linguistic one.

The alternative, then, to the religious theory of the source of values is that evolution endowed us with a moral sense, and we have expanded its circle of application over the course of history through reason (grasping the logical interchangeability of our interests and others'), knowledge (learning of the advantages of cooperation over the long term), and sympathy (having experiences that allow us to feel other people's pain).

In that regard we are different from our ancestors of a few centuries ago, who approved, carried out, and even savored the infliction of unspeakable agony on other living beings. What were these people feeling? And why don't we feel it today?

No one thinks of Thursday as Thor's Day anymore, or of breakfast as breaking a fast. Modern English has thousands of former phrases and complex words that have congealed into what people now perceive as simple words, such as business (busyness), Christmas (Christ's Mass), and spinster (one who spins).

Natural selection consists of competition among genes to be represented in the next generation, and the organisms we see today are descendants of those that edged out their rivals in contests for mates, food, and dominance.

in which I argued that human beings are fitted by evolution with a number of destructive motives such as greed, lust, dominance, vengeance, and self-deception.

Scandinavians needed a couple of additional centuries before they thought the better of killing each other, and Italians didn't get serious about it until the 19th century. But by the 20th century the annual homicide rate of every Western European country had fallen into a narrow band centered on 1 per 100,000.

when things change without a human agent directing the change, they are likely to change for the worse.

men are not from Mars, nor are women from Venus. Men and women are from Africa, the cradle of our evolution, where they evolved together as a single species

Moore noted that it is sensible to ask, "This conduct is more evolutionarily successful, but is it good?" The mere fact that the question makes sense shows that evolutionary success and goodness are not the same thing.

Among the reasons there was no such crisis was that cathode-ray tubes were superseded by liquid crystal displays made of common elements.

The parents of today who complain about the iPods and cell phones that are soldered onto the ears of teenagers forget that their own parents made the same complaint about them and their transistor radios.

the written word is a recent invention that has left no trace in our genome and must be laboriously acquired throughout childhood and beyond. Speech

Even evolutionary explanations of the traditional division of labor by sex do not imply that it is unchangeable, "natural" in the sense of good, or something that should be forced on individual women or men who don't want it.

The average American now retires at age 62. One hundred years ago, the average American died at age 51.

The allergy to evolution in the social and cognitive sciences has been, I think, a barrier to understanding.