Steve Stewart-Williams Quotes

born 1971 New Zealand

Steve Stewart-Williams (born 1971) is a Professor of Psychology in the School of Psychology at the University of Nottingham Malaysia, and author of the books Darwin, God and the Meaning of Life (2010) and The Ape That Understood the Universe (2018). He was born in Wellington, New Zealand.

New Zealand
Academics
Philosophers
Psychologists

Random Steve Stewart-Williams quote

84 quotes

Rather than the human brain evolving for God, God evolved for the human brain.

The Ape That Understood the Universe: How the Mind and Culture Evolve (2018)

We’re clusters of chemical reactions that contemplate deep truths about the nature of reality.

The Ape That Understood the Universe: How the Mind and Culture Evolve (2018)

Nature isn’t just a bloodbath; it’s also a vast, unending orgy.

The Ape That Understood the Universe: How the Mind and Culture Evolve (2018)

There are no average sex differences in IQ, for instance (much to the surprise and disappointment of both sexes).

A Billion Years of Sex Differences: How Evolution Shaped the Minds of Men and Women (2026)

When you contemplate the universe, part of the universe becomes conscious of itself.

Darwin, God and the Meaning of Life: How Evolutionary Theory Undermines Everything You Think You Know (2010)

By clamping down on male aggression, culture may make the sex difference in aggression smaller than it would otherwise have been.

The Ape That Understood the Universe: How the Mind and Culture Evolve (2018)

It may be the fate of the universe to spend an eternity in darkness, save one brief flash of self-awareness in the middle of nowhere.

Darwin, God and the Meaning of Life: How Evolutionary Theory Undermines Everything You Think You Know (2010)

A Ku Klux Klan member would be mortified to learn that he was actually a Black man. Many people’s reaction to learning that they are actually animals, or actually apes, is the same.

Darwin, God and the Meaning of Life: How Evolutionary Theory Undermines Everything You Think You Know (2010)

Even in a pointless universe, pointless happiness and pleasures are surely preferable to pointless suffering.

Darwin, God and the Meaning of Life: How Evolutionary Theory Undermines Everything You Think You Know (2010)

Jane Goodall once wrote about a female chimpanzee who mated with more than fifty males in a single day. This is uncommon among human beings, even in LA.

The Ape That Understood the Universe: How the Mind and Culture Evolve (2018)

As a result of cumulative culture, we have ideas in our heads that are orders of magnitude smarter than we are.

The Ape That Understood the Universe: How the Mind and Culture Evolve (2018)

Humans are chimpanzees reciting Shakespeare – dunces with the technology of geniuses.

The Ape That Understood the Universe: How the Mind and Culture Evolve (2018)

Humans are as dependent on culture as we are on oxygen; without it, we’re as naked and vulnerable as a crab without a shell.

The Ape That Understood the Universe: How the Mind and Culture Evolve (2018)

Our genes push us in certain directions, but our genes aren’t the only things shaping us, and thus we can often push right back.

A Billion Years of Sex Differences: How Evolution Shaped the Minds of Men and Women (2026)

Even in the age of science, we understand the motions of the distant, ancient stars better than we understand the organism observing them: ourselves.

The Ape That Understood the Universe: How the Mind and Culture Evolve (2018)

Unless sex differences are products of discrimination or cause demonstrable harm, progressives have no more right to eliminate them than traditionalists have to enlarge them.

A Billion Years of Sex Differences: How Evolution Shaped the Minds of Men and Women (2026)

If you treat a dog like a cat, it’ll still act like a dog. Maybe it’s the same with boys and girls.

A Billion Years of Sex Differences: How Evolution Shaped the Minds of Men and Women (2026)

In our primary approach to making babies, humans are more like the average bird than the average mammal. Again: all very weird.

A Billion Years of Sex Differences: How Evolution Shaped the Minds of Men and Women (2026)

Does female orgasm have an evolutionary function? Ironically, scientists have yet to come to a satisfying conclusion about this matter.

The Ape That Understood the Universe: How the Mind and Culture Evolve (2018)

From a comparative perspective, we are a relatively monomorphic mammal, with relatively monomorphic minds.

The Ape that Thought It Was a Peacock: Does Evolutionary Psychology Exaggerate Human Sex Differences? (2013)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Steve Stewart-Williams (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.