Science is often misrepresented as ‘the body of knowledge acquired by performing replicated controlled experiments in the laboratory.’ Actually, science is something broader: the acquisition of reliable knowledge about the world.
Much of human history has consisted of unequal conflicts between the haves and the have-nots.
(On the beginning of the mid-1990s’ genocidal war in Rwanda:)Within six weeks, an estimated 800,000 Tutsi, representing about three-quarters of the Tutsi then remaining in Rwanda, or 11% of Rwanda’s total population, had been killed.
…neither life nor history is an enterprise for those who seek simplicity and consistency.
History as well as life itself is complicated — neither life nor history is an enterprise for those who seek simplicity and consistency.
Rhino-mounted Bantu shock troops could have overthrown the Roman Empire. It never happened.
Sex in social mammals is generally carried out in public, before the gazes of other members of the troop.
Sex is flagrantly separated from reproduction in a few species, including bonobos and dolphins.
big-bang reproduction, or semelparity: a single reproductive effort, followed by preprogrammed death.
Recreational sex is thus supposed to function as the glue holding a human couple together while they cooperate in rearing their helpless baby.
But the largest number of primate species–thirty-four–have a promiscuous system in which females routinely associate and copulate with multiple males.
Perhaps our greatest distinction as a species is our capacity, unique among animals, to make counter-evolutionary choices.
It’s striking that Native Americans evolved no devastating epidemic diseases to give to Europeans in return for the many devastating epidemic diseases that Indians received from the Old World.
[T]he values to which people cling most stubbornly under inappropriate conditions are those values that were previously the source of their greatest triumphs.
I’ve worked very hard in this book to keep the lines of communication open. I don’t want to turn someone away from this information for partisan political reasons.
Lest those islands still seem to you too remote in space and time to be relevant to our modern societies, just think about the risks… of our increasing globalization and increasing worldwide economic interdependence.
Biology is the science. Evolution is the concept that makes biology unique.
Take air quality in the United States today: It’s about 30 percent better than it was 25 years ago, even though there are now more people driving more cars.
Federal elections happen every two years in this country. Presidential elections every four years. And four years just isn’t long enough to dismantle all the environmental laws we’ve got in this country.