Evolutionary Quotes

“In a Fisherian world, animals are slaves to evolutionary fashion, evolving extravagant and arbitrary displays and tastes that are all" meaningless "; they do not involve anything other than perceived qualities.”
― Richard O. Prum, The Evolution of Beauty: How Darwin's Forgotten Theory of Mate Choice Shapes the Animal World—And Us

“If we are merely a chance product of ‘random happenstance’ and nothing more, doesn’t it strike you as a bit odd that we have the ability to contemplate the question of ‘random happenstance’ with such methodical complexity?”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“Christianity is 'developmental' as opposed to 'evolutionary'".

~R. Alan Woods [2011]”
― R. Alan Woods, The Journey Is The Destination: A Photo Journal

“It does appear that some parts of our evolutionary process seem inevitable. It is striking that throughout evolutionary history, the eye evolved independently fifty to a hundred times. This is strong evidence for the fact that the different rolls of the dice that have occurred across different species seem to have produced species with eyes regardless of what is going on around them. Lots of other examples illustrate how some features, if they are advantageous, seem to rise to the top of the evolutionary swamp. This is illustrated every time you see the same feature appearing more than once in different parts of the animal kingdom. Dolphins and bats, for example, use echolocation, but they evolved this trait independently at very different points on the evolutionary tree.”
― Marcus du Sautoy, The Great Unknown: Seven Journeys to the Frontiers of Science

“Only an evolutionary eyeblink separated Kanu from the savannah, and that was just as true for the Risen. Their minds might be fixed on the stars, but their bodies were only a footstep from the dust and heat of Amboseli.”
― Alastair Reynolds, Poseidon's Wake

“Secondo mio marito non esiste femmina più fortunata della donna. Me lo ripete spesso. Dice che soltanto la femmina umana possiede un aspetto e una voce più armoniosi del maschio. Nel mondo animale sono i maschi ad esercitare il loro fascino: si pensi alle danze nuziali dei ragni e dei tacchini, al canto dei grilli e dei canarini, alla vistosa bellezza dei pavoni, al profumo del gatto muschiato: la donna è l'unica femmina più attraente del maschio, e oltretutto assomma tutti i modelli di seduzione degli animali. Il maschio biologicamente è sfavorito, È in virtù della prole che la femmina dell'animale può considerarsi superiore al maschio. La natura protegge le madri.”
― Yasunari Kawabata, Immagini di cristallo

“Be part of the evolutionary effort that keeps us all moving toward the light. Be conscious of what you think, say and do. Have the courage to learn, to grow and to understand. Be a force for good and be an example for others.”
― Laurence Overmire, The One Idea That Saves The World: A Message of Hope in a Time of Crisis

“You have an evolutionary need to be sensual.”
― Lebo Grand

“Our true nature and desires are complex. That’s why sensuality was meant to be fluid, unconfined, and not linear.”
― Lebo Grand

“Sensuality is spiritual. When something is spiritual, it is fluid. Meaning it is likely to change frequently, suddenly, or unexpectedly.”
― Lebo Grand

“Sensuality is spiritual. When something is spiritual, it is fluid. Meaning it flows. Sensuality is also likely to change frequently, suddenly, or unexpectedly without losing its true essence.”
― Lebo Grand

“When raping and pillaging is the preferred scheme for mating, speed is of the essence. So, the sturdy Neanderthals did not survive.”
― Debra Gavant

“Thanks to cultural evolution and technological progress, humans have gained unprecedented power to alter their social and physical environment but, in doing so, have also created enormous opportunity for evolutionary mismatch.”
― Marco del Giudice, Evolutionary Psychopathology: A Unified Approach

“Evolutionary mismatch may occur when an evolved mechanism encounters a novel environmental context that falls outside of the range that was recently encountered over its evolutionary history (the EEA or environment of evolutionary adaptation). In the new context, a functional mechanism can give rise to maladaptive outcomes or even induce dysfunctions in other mechanisms.”
― Marco del Giudice, Evolutionary Psychopathology: A Unified Approach

“In modern societies, for example, the media expose people to a relentless stream of images of unrealistically attractive" competitors "-an artificial, evolutionarily novel kind of social stimulus. It has been hypothesized that such exposure hyperactivates the evolved mechanisms that regulate female competition for attractiveness and status, thus contributing to the rising incidence of eating disorders.”
― Marco del Giudice, Evolutionary Psychopathology: A Unified Approach

“For instance, people who form early representations of the world as dangerous or uncontrollable may become anxious and start avoiding situations that they perceive as threatening. Avoidance is usually an adaptive response to danger; in this case, however, it prevents anxious individuals from learning that the environment is actually safer than they believe, thus locking them in a state of exaggerated anxiety. Even if such catastrophic failures of learning mechanisms are statistically rare, they can be highly maladaptive for the individuals who experience them.”
― Marco del Giudice, Evolutionary Psychopathology: A Unified Approach

“To the extent that psychological mechanisms rely on information acquired through learning, they are vulnerable to maladaptive outcomes owing to the intrinsic limitations of learning processes. Indeed, the massive capacity for individual and social learning required to exploit the cognitive niche may contribute to explain our species' seemingly unique vulnerability to mental disorders.”
― Marco del Giudice, Evolutionary Psychopathology: A Unified Approach

“Defensive mechanisms can make two symmetric kinds of mistakes: they can fail to activate in the presence of a threat (false negatives) or become activated when no threat is present (false positives). Even when defenses are functional and optimally calibrated, errors cannot be completely avoided; given the tradeoffs between the costs of different types of errors, the smoke detector principle suggests that defensive systems should typically evolve to commit more false positives than false negatives.”
― Marco del Giudice, Evolutionary Psychopathology: A Unified Approach