43 Quotes About Human-evolution
"Comprehension is not the source of competence or the active ingredient in competence; comprehension is composed of competences."
"In a series of forms graduating insensibly from some apelike creature to man as he now exists, it would be impossible to fix on any definite point where the term 'man' ought to be used."
"It may be that there are kernels of truth in a few of these doctrines, but their widespread acceptancebetokens a lack of intellectual rigor, an absence of skepticism, a need to replace experiments by desires."
"It is very difficult to evolve by altering the deep fabric of life; any change there is likely to be lethal. But fundamental change can be accomplished by the addition of new systems on top of old ones…Thus evolution by addition and the functional preservation of the preexisting structure must occur for one of two reasons-either the old function is required as well as the new one, or there is no way of bypassing the old system that is consistent with survival."
"Washburn has reported that infant baboons and other young primates appear to be born with only three inborn fears -of falling, snakes, and the dark-corresponding respectively to the dangers posed byNewtonian gravitation to tree-dwellers, by our ancient enemies the reptiles, and by mammalian nocturnal predators, which must have been particularly terrifying for the visually oriented primates."
"Today we are even manipulating the DNA that makes us possible in the first place—a case of evolution evolving new ways to evolve."
"civilization is the very root cause of the woes of civilization"
"[Evolutionary selection pressures for general communication] explain why humans are peculiar in having our rather small irises set against a white background—the sclera—in our eyes. Anyone watching us can infer where we are looking or whom we are looking at. Experiments with apes and infants show that apes watch the orientation of the heads of others while human infants watch the eyes."
"MacLean has shown that the R-complex plays an important role in aggressive behavior, territoriality, ritual and the establishment of social hierarchies. Despite occasional welcome exceptions, this seems to me to characterize a great deal of modern human bureaucratic and political behavior."