104 quotes
Natural selection has designed all parts of our bodies to last just long enough to see our children into independence, no more.
Genome (1999)
In other words, a record of our past is etched into our genes.
Genome (1999)
People are attracted to people of high reproductive and genetic potential—the healthy, the fit, and the powerful. The consequences of this fact, which goes under the name of sexual selection, are bizarre in the extreme.
The Red Queen (1993)
But the astonishing result (of IQ testing) is the correlation between the scores of adopted children reared together: zero. Being in the same family has no discernible effect on IQ at all.
Genome (1999)
At its birth eugenics was not a politicised science; it was a science-ised political creed.
Genome (1999)
The politicisation of the issue has had absurd results.
Genome (1999)
Sex keeps the parasite guessing.
The Red Queen (1993)
Such “habituation” is just a property of the way brains work; our senses, and those of grackles, notice novelty and change, not steady states. The female preference did not evolve: it just is that way.
The Red Queen (1993)
Genes do indeed behave as if they have selfish goals, not consciously, but retrospectively: genes that behave in this way thrive and genes that don’t don’t.
Genome (1999)
Sexual selection theory suggests that much of the behavior and some of the appearance of an animal is adapted not to help it survive but to help it to acquire the best or the most mates.
The Red Queen (1993)
Just as we underestimate the degree to which human brains rely upon instincts, so we have generally underestimated the degree to which other animals are capable of learning.
Genome (1999)
There is a contradiction at the heart of feminism, one that few feminists have acknowledged. You cannot say, first, that men and women are equally capable of all jobs and, second, that if jobs were done by women, they would be done differently.
The Red Queen (1993)
There is no nature that exists devoid of nurture; there is no nurture that develops without nature. To say otherwise is like saying that the area of a field is determined by its length but not its width. Every behavior is the product of an instinct trained by experience.
The Red Queen (1993)
We assume, and rightly that a Russian is just as human after two generations of oppressive totalitarianism as his grandfather was before him. But why, then, does social science proceed as if it were not the case, as if people’s natures are the products of their societies?
The Red Queen (1993)
I know of no other way that human nature can have developed except by evolution, and there is now overwhelming evidence that there is no other way for evolution to work except by competitive reproduction. Those strains that reproduce persist; those that do not reproduce die out.
The Red Queen (1993)
In history, and in evolution, progress is always a futile, Sisyphean struggle to stay in the same relative place by getting ever better at things. Cars move through the congested streets of London no faster than horse-drawn carriages did a century ago.
The Red Queen (1993)
But as we shall see, the appearance is misleading. Animal altruism is a myth. Even in the most spectacular cases of selflessness it turns out that animals are serving the selfies interests of their own genes—if sometimes being careless with their bodies.
The Red Queen (1993)
One of the peculiar features of history is that time always erodes advantage. Every invention sooner or later leads to a counterinvention. Every success contains the seeds of its own overthrow. Every hegemony comes to an end. Evolutionary history is no different.
The Red Queen (1993)
Sexual relations are driven not by what is good, in evolutionary terms, for men or for women, but for their chromosomes. The ability to seduce a woman was good for Y chromosomes in the past; the ability to resist seduction by a man was good for X chromosomes in the past.
Genome (1999)
Judges were never very good at science.
Genome (1999)