Quotes About Biology

Perhaps the time has come for ethics to be removed temporarily from the hands of the philosophers and biologicized - made part of the new synthesis.

Natural selection, the driving force of biological evolution in both individual and group selection, is captured in a single phrase: mutation proposes, the environment disposes.

we are chemosensory idiots. By comparison most other organisms are geniuses.

the biological mind is the essence and the very meaning of the human condition.

eusociality, the most advanced state of social behavior

phenotypic plasticity

S]elfish members win within groups, but groups of altruists best groups of selfish members. (63)

Ethical philosophers intuit the deontological canons of morality by consulting the emotive centers of their own hypothalamic-limbic system... Only by interpreting the activity of the emotive centers as a biological adaptation can the meaning of the ethical canons be deciphered.

Within groups selfish individuals beat altruistic individuals, but groups of altruists beat groups of selfish individuals.

individual selection promoted sin, while group selection promoted virtue.

HISTORY MAKES LITTLE SENSE WITHOUT PREHISTORY, AND PREHISTORY MAKES LITTLE SENSE WITHOUT BIOLOGY. KNOWLEDGE OF PREHISTORY AND BIOLOGY IS INCREASING RAPIDLY, BRINGING INTO FOCUS HOW HUMANITY ORIGINATED AND WHY A SPECIES LIKE OUR OWN EXISTS ON THIS PLANET.

an iron rule exists in genetic social evolution. It is that selfish individuals beat altruistic individuals, while groups of altruists beat groups of selfish individuals.

The ultimate explanation is why we have two hands and ten fingers to start with, and why are we prone with them to do thus and so and not something else.

more efficient than vegetable food.

these species have evolved only rarely in evolution.

biophilia, which I will be so bold as to define as the innate tendency to focus on life and lifelike processes.

Meat yields higher energy per gram eaten than does vegetation.

selfish members win within groups, but groups of altruists best groups of selfish members.

Our lives are restrained by two laws of biology: all of life's entities and processes are obedient to the laws of physics and chemistry; and all of life's entities and processes have arisen through evolution and natural selection.

A great deal remains to be learned about the genetic control of brain development

the origin of eusociality requires the preadaptation of a constructed and guarded nest site.

Human existence may be simpler than we thought. There is no predestination, no unfathomed mystery of life. Demons and gods do not vie for our allegiance. Instead, we are self-made, independent, alone, and fragile, a biological species adapted to live in a biological world. What counts for long-term survival is intelligent self-understanding, based upon a greater independence of thought than that tolerated today even in our most advanced democratic societies.

If there is one central intellectual reality at the end of the twentieth century, it is that the biological approach to psychiatry--treating mental illness as a genetically influenced disorder of brain chemistry--has been a smashing success. Freud's ideas, which dominated the history of psychiatry for the past half century, are now vanishing like the last snows of winter.

Given that the pre-frontal cortex is a key to our success as a species, consuming any amount of alcohol or other intoxicant seems really stupid.