Quotes from Hal Whitehead

Technology has changed the environment of humans and the ecology of Earth. It has

People listened to whale songs, and politicians listened to the whale-song listening people and, then, finally, acted on the warnings of the population biologist Cassandras. The

Human technology can be so powerful and effective because it accumulates. Cultural

Morality, by promoting cooperative behavior, can change the whole population biology of a species, and it seems to be an important product of gene-culture coevolution in human societies.

Ethnicity and morality can of course combine, giving the sense that "we" are "good" and "they" are "bad.

renowned biologist and thinker E. O. Wilson calls the study of gene-culture coevolution "one of the great unexplored domains of science.

In the field of animal behavior, behavioral ecology became "normal science," in the terminology of the philosopher of science, Thomas Kuhn.116

It soon became clear that elements of the songs of many birds are socially learned, and social learning seemed the most plausible explanation for the spread of a technique by which blue tits opened the tops of British milk bottles.123 Birds seemed to have culture.

Galef and Tomasello come from a null-hypothesis-testing, experimental psychology background. The null hypothesis is something like "chimpanzees do not possess culture," with culture being defined by something like "traditional behavior transmitted by imitation or teaching." They could not show in their own or others' experimental studies that captive chimpanzees could imitate or teach, so did not reject the null hypothesis. No culture.

3.2. Evolution of the marine mammals, showing aquatic, semiaquatic, and largely terrestrial groups of species. Copyright Emese Kazár.