Evolutionary Psychology Quotes

• Evolutionary psychology is one of four sciences that are bringing human nature back into the picture.

  Steven Pinker

  Psychology, Four, Human Nature

  "A biological understanding of human nature". Edge Interview, www.edge.org. September 18, 2017.

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• In the distant future I see open fields for far more important researches. Psychology will be based on a new foundation, that of the necessary acquirement of each mental power and capacity by gradation. Light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history.

  Charles Darwin

  Future, Science, Men

  Charles Darwin (2003). “On the Origin of Species”, p.51, Broadview Press

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• The task of evolutionary psychology is not to weigh in on human nature, a task better left to others. It is to add the satisfying kind of insight that only science can provide: to connect what we know about human nature with the rest of our knowledge of how the world works, and to explain the largest number of facts with the smallest number of assumptions.

  Steven Pinker

  Numbers, Psychology, Tasks

  Steven Pinker (2009). “How the Mind Works”, p.517, W. W. Norton & Company

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• There's a common criticism of evolutionary psychology that it's fatalistic and it dooms us to eternal strife, 'Why even try to work toward peace if we're just bloody killer apes and violence is in our genes?'

  Steven Pinker

  Psychology, Criticism, Trying

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• Our evolutionary psychology preconditions us not to respond to threats which can be postponed until later.

  Mark Lynas

  Psychology, Climate, Threat

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• Considering that we live in an era of evolutionary everything---evolutionary biology, evolutionary medicine, evolutionary ecology, evolutionary psychology, evolutionary economics, evolutionary computing---it was surprising how rarely people thought in evolutionary terms. It was a human blind spot. We look at the world around us as a snapshot when it was really a movie, constantly changing.

  Michael Crichton

  Blind Spots, Medicine, People

  Michael Crichton (2002). “Prey”

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• There is a whole field of inquiry that has come up in the last 30 or 40 years - some call it sociobiology or evolutionary psychology - relating to where we get our moral sense and why we value the idea of altruism, and locating both answers in behavioral adaptations for the preservation of our genes.

  Richard Dawkins

  Ideas, Years, Psychology

  Source: inters.org

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• Evolutionary psychology tells us that men, especially powerful men, feel invincible and entitled to spread their seed, and that women can't resist the scent of masculine power. Women, by contrast, are said to be more altruistic and collaborative, seeking power so that they can share it with others.

  Hanna Rosin

  Powerful, Men, Psychology

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• People are always invoking evolutionary psychology for everything. "Why do men hang around asking women out? Oh, to improve their reproductive success," every damn thing - religion, art - it can all be explained by evolutionary psychology. But in our hearts we know that evolutionary psychology is only sort of accurate, because it really doesn't capture what's most interesting about our lives.

  D. T. Max

  Art, Men, Interesting

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• I'm an anarchist. I'm implacably opposed to heirarchical systems of power and control. I also mistrust crowds, as they often operate according to their lowest common denominator. In terms of evolutionary psychology, the crowd is very close to a herd of stampeding wildebeest.

  Will Self

  Psychology, Crowds, Common

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• Peter Kropotkin was surely on the left. He was one of the founders of what is now called 'sociobiology' or 'evolutionary psychology' with his book Mutual Aid, arguing that human nature had evolved in ways conducive to the communitarian anarchism that he espoused.

  Noam Chomsky

  Book, Psychology, Way

  Source: libcom.org

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• Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jetha have written the essential corrective to the evolutionary psychology literature.

  Stanton Peele

  Psychology, Essentials, Literature

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• Some people think that evolutionary psychology claims to have discovered that human nature is selfish and wicked. But they are flattering the researchers and anyone who would claim to have discovered the opposite. No one needs a scientist to measure whether humans are prone to knavery. The question has been answered in the history books, the newspapers, the ethnographic record, and the letters to Ann Landers. But people treat it like an open question, as if someday science might discover that it's all a bad dream and we will wake up to find that it is human nature to love one another.

  Steven Pinker

  Dream, Selfish, Book

  "How the Mind Works". Book by Steven Pinker, 1997.

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