Ian Tattersall Quotes

• It is...highly probable that from the very beginning, apart from death, the only ironclad rule of human experience has been the Law of Unintended Consequences.

  Ian Tattersall

  Law, Unintended Consequences, Human Experience

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• Perhaps we will one day be able at least to admit of a God possessing sufficient majesty and expansiveness to transcend the limits of our own imaginations and experience. But meanwhile, . . . we might do well to look upon the inadequacy of our concepts of God as the truest mirror of those limitations that define our condition.

  Ian Tattersall

  Mirrors, Imagination, One Day

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• Hominids typically haven't so much adapted to change, as they have accommodated to it.

  Ian Tattersall

  Hominids, Adapted, Havens

  Ian Tattersall (2012). “Masters of the Planet: The Search for Our Human Origins”, p.137, Macmillan

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• Behavior is ultimately the product of the brain, the most mysterious organ of them all.

  Ian Tattersall

  Brain, Mysterious, Behavior

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• The alternative to extinction is stagnation, and stagnation is seldom a good thing.

  Ian Tattersall

  Alternatives, Extinction, Good Things

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• When environments change, they usually do so pretty rapidly, at rates with which adaptation by natural selection would be hard put to keep up. When such change occurs, the quality of your adaptation to your old habitat is irrelevant, and any competitive advantage you might have had may be eliminated at a stroke.

  Ian Tattersall

  Quality, Would Be, Habitat

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