84 quotes
People often assume that anyone who studies evolution thinks that everything should be about the survival of the fittest. However, this makes no more sense than assuming that anyone who studies glaciers thinks that everything should be done really, really slowly.
Darwin, God and the Meaning of Life: How Evolutionary Theory Undermines Everything You Think You Know (2010)
It is true that women get fewer jobs in math-heavy STEM fields. But that’s only because fewer women apply for them. Those who do apply are generally more likely than men to be interviewed and more likely to get the job.
A Billion Years of Sex Differences: How Evolution Shaped the Minds of Men and Women (2026)
The most violent category of human being is the toddler, and the only reason we don’t worry more about the epidemic of toddler violence is that toddlers are small and cute, and can’t do much damage with their tiny fists.
A Billion Years of Sex Differences: How Evolution Shaped the Minds of Men and Women (2026)
A well-designed parental male will tend to end up investing in his own offspring, rather than the offspring of his good-looking next- door neighbor. And one way to help ensure that this happens is to be easily moved to jealousy.
The Ape That Understood the Universe: How the Mind and Culture Evolve (2018)
Why would natural selection give men the physical equipment needed for violence but not the psychological machinery to operate it? This would make about as much sense as giving us teeth and a digestive system, but not a desire to eat.
The Ape That Understood the Universe: How the Mind and Culture Evolve (2018)
Evolutionary theory answers one of the most profound and fundamental questions human beings have ever asked themselves, a question that has plagued reflective minds for as long as reflective minds have existed in the universe: why are we here?
Darwin, God and the Meaning of Life: How Evolutionary Theory Undermines Everything You Think You Know (2010)
The Nurture Only theory asks us to believe not only that selection eliminated the [sex] differences for reasons unknown, but that learning and culture then coincidentally reproduced exactly the same differences in every culture on record. This is not a compelling thesis.
The Ape That Understood the Universe: How the Mind and Culture Evolve (2018)
Tying morality to religion is a little like transporting a precious cargo on a sinking ship. What happens when the child grows up and starts doubting the factual claims of the religion? The cargo may be lost with the ship.
Darwin, God and the Meaning of Life: How Evolutionary Theory Undermines Everything You Think You Know (2010)
Men corner the market on what evolutionary biologists call mate-choice failure, with documented cases involving everything from lampposts to trees to vacuum cleaners. We all make mistakes, I guess – but men more often than women.
A Billion Years of Sex Differences: How Evolution Shaped the Minds of Men and Women (2026)
Sex differences in occupational preferences and priorities suggest one possible reason that more men than women go into maths-intensive STEM fields. The reason, put simply, is that more men than women want to go into these fields.
Men, Women and STEM: Why the Differences and What Should be Done? (2021)
Changes in the inhabitants of the earth do not reflect a constant process of improvement in the design of organisms, any more than changes in fashion over the years reflect a constant process of improvement in the quality of clothing.
Darwin, God and the Meaning of Life: How Evolutionary Theory Undermines Everything You Think You Know (2010)
However, the absence of perfect concealment does not imply the presence of active advertisement, and if fertility were advertised in humans, we would presumably not need to employ sophisticated experimental methods to demonstrate its detectability.
The Ape that Thought It Was a Peacock: Does Evolutionary Psychology Exaggerate Human Sex Differences? (2013)
The default assumption, in lieu of strong evidence to the contrary, should be that we’re continuous with the rest of the living world, and thus that the differences we see in our species have the same origin as those in every other: natural selection.
A Billion Years of Sex Differences: How Evolution Shaped the Minds of Men and Women (2026)
Even if toy makers and advertisers could conjure sex differences into existence on a whim, why would they? Toy makers would ideally want both sexes to covet their offerings, not just one or the other, as this would instantly double the size of their market.
A Billion Years of Sex Differences: How Evolution Shaped the Minds of Men and Women (2026)
If this is not what springs immediately to mind as soon as the words “on average” are appended to a description of mean differences, then the words “on average” have not rectified the damage done by the use of means to describe populations of varied individuals.
The Ape that Kicked the Hornet's Nest (2013)
The idea that the Biblical stories are symbolic is charitable to the point of absurdity. What would we think of a university professor who, happening upon unambiguous errors in a favourite student’s work, concluded that the student was speaking symbolically and awarded top marks?
Darwin, God and the Meaning of Life: How Evolutionary Theory Undermines Everything You Think You Know (2010)
The starting point for evolutionary psychology is the idea that human beings are animals, and that like all animals, we’re products of natural selection. This is true of our bodies, but it’s also true of our minds.
The Ape That Understood the Universe: How the Mind and Culture Evolve (2018)
We should treat individuals as individuals, rather than as instantiations of the statistical properties of the groups to which they belong. In other words, we should judge people by the content of their characters, not their sex chromosomes.
A Billion Years of Sex Differences: How Evolution Shaped the Minds of Men and Women (2026)
The year 1838 represents an important milestone for the planet Earth. For this was the year in which a tiny fragment of the Earth – a fragment known as Charles Darwin – answered an ancient and bewildering question: Why are we here?
The Ape That Understood the Universe: How the Mind and Culture Evolve (2018)
Some differences may never be completely eradicated – not, at any rate, without draconian interventions that limit people’s freedom and potentially make them miserable. Such interventions may be modern-day equivalents of earlier efforts to force gay people to be straight or left-handers to use their right hands: a progressive form of conversion therapy.
A Billion Years of Sex Differences: How Evolution Shaped the Minds of Men and Women (2026)