68 quotes
My definition of a scientist is that you can complete the following sentence: ‘he or she has shown that…’,”
Cultural evolution is Lamarckian and very fast, whereas biological evolution is Darwinian and usually very slow.
On Human Nature (1978)
Intertribal aggression, escalating in some cultures to limited warfare, is common enough to be regarded as a general characteristic of hunter-gatherer social behavior.
On Human Nature (1978)
The rules followed are tight enough to produce a broad overlap in the decisions taken by all individuals and hence a convergence powerful enough to be labelled human nature.
On Human Nature (1978)
The genius of human society is in fact the ease with which alliances are formed, broken, and reconstituted, always with strong emotional appeals to rules believed to be absolute.
On Human Nature (1978)
We should preserve every scrap of biodiversity as priceless while we learn to use it and come to understand what it means to humanity. We should not knowingly allow any species or race to go extinct.
In early history phobias might have provided the extra margin needed to insure survival...
On Human Nature (1978)
Cultural change is the statistical product of the separate behavioral responses of large numbers of human beings who cope as best they can with social existence.
On Human Nature (1978)
The variety of life at every hierarchical level and spatial scale of biological organisations are: genes within populations, populations within species, species within communities, communities within landscapes, landscapes within biomes, and biomes within the biosphere.
Although the capacity to become schizophrenic may well be within all of us, there is no question that certain persons have distinctive genes predisposing them to the condition.
On Human Nature (1978)
There is no such thing as a typically "schizophrenogenic" (schizophrenia-producing) family arrangement, one most likely to produce a mentally ill adult from a child with the potential for the disease.
On Human Nature (1978)
Companies that are willing to share, to withhold in order to further the growth of the company, willing to try to get a better atmosphere through a demonstration of democratic principles, fairness and cooperation, a better product, those will win in the end.
At the apogee of the state's evolution, architecture was monumental, and the ruling class were exalted as a pseudospecies. The sacred rites of statehood became the central focus of religion.
On Human Nature (1978)
The channels of human mental development... are circuitous and variable. Rather than specify a single trait, human genes prescribe the capacity to develop a certain array of traits.
On Human Nature (1978)
Evidence has... been adduced that schizophrenia is widespread in other kinds of human societies. ...and they form a substantial fraction of the clientele of the tribal shamans and healers.
On Human Nature (1978)
Because it is... far slower than Lamarckian evolution, biological evolution is always quickly outrun by cultural change.
On Human Nature (1978)
Genetic determinism... On its interpretation depends the entire relation between biology and the social sciences.
On Human Nature (1978)
If we choose the path of destruction, the planet will continue to descend irreversibly into the Anthropocene Epoch, the biologically final age in which the planet exists almost exclusively by, for, and of ourselves.
The toxic mix of religion and tribalism has become so dangerous as to justify taking seriously the alternative view, that humanism based on science is the effective antidote, the light and the way at last placed before us.
The theory of population genetics and experiments on other organisms show that substantial changes can occur in the span of less than 100 generations, which for man reaches back to the time of the Roman Empire.
On Human Nature (1978)