"

It's natural to think that living things must be the handiwork of a designer. But it was also natural to think that the sun went around the earth. Ove...more

"

Northeastern and most coastal states will vote for the candidate who is more closely aligned with international cooperation and engagement, secularism...more

"

A...reason we are so-so scientists is that our brains were shaped for fitness, not for truth. Sometimes truth is adaptive, but sometimes it is not.

"

The unstated premise that nature is nice lies behind many of the objections to the Darwinian theory of human sexuality. Carefree sex is natural and go...more

"

Some people think that evolutionary psychology claims to have discovered that human nature is selfish and wicked. But they are flattering the research...more

"

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...more

"

Many textbooks point out that no animal has evolved wheels and cite the fact as an example of how evolution is often incapable of finding the optimal ...more

"

Many people think that the theory of the selfish gene says that “animals try to spread their genes.” That misstates the facts and it misstates the the...more

"

I think moralistic science is bad for morals and bad for science.

"

the mind is a neural computer

"

The Darwinian approach to sex is often attacked as being antifeminist, but that is just wrong. Indeed, the accusation is baffling on the face of it, e...more

"

Language-lovers know that there is a word for every fear. Are you afraid of wine? Then you have oenophobia. Tremulous about train travel? You suffer f...more

"

Science is thus a paradigm for how we ought to gain knowledge—not the particular methods or institutions of science but its value system, namely to se...more

"

What could be more fundamental to our sense of meaning and purpose than a conception of whether the strivings of the human race over long stretches of...more

"

Many people implicitly believe in the Hydraulic Theory of Violence: that humans harbor an inner drive toward aggression (a death instinct or thirst fo...more