“There is behavioral ecology, which looks closely at the difference different ecologies make to behavior and other features of animals and humans. There's evolutionary individual psychology, there's evolutionary social psychology. In Darwin's terms, evolution couldn't exist without variation, and variation is important in behavioral genetics. And so on, and so on. There are so many instances in which evolution actually sharpens the precision, I think, with which one can find out the importance of differences. We're interested in differences as well as commonalities.” ThinkingImportantDifferentIndividualTermAnimalPsychologyEvolutionBehaviorImportanceEcologySocial PsychologyCommonality Author:Brian Boyd
“I think that's an important part of art in general. Especially in literature, in stories, we play with eventualities that may put us through a lot of intense negative feelings - say, in horror films or tragedies as intense as King Lear - but we come out feeling richer. We've lived to the fullest, we've tested ourselves in these environments.” ThinkingArtImportantFeelingsFilmLiteratureEnvironmentHorrorNegativeTragedyIntenseHorror FilmLear Author:Brian Boyd
“Scientists, to give them credit, do not think of the humanities in a negative way. It's the bureaucrats who want to cut costs who think, Well, here's something that's not booming at the moment, let's slash it.” ThinkingGivingMomentsHumanityCuttingNegativeScientist Author:Brian Boyd
“I think like almost everything in evolution, the old forms persist. New forms come along - not always, of course; there are species and whole lineages that go extinct - but basically novels and plays, and so on, will continue to exist. Jokes, as the lowest-cost form of narrative, will certainly continue to exist. They're a bit like microbes in the biological world. They're low-cost and they're everywhere. They're the most successful form of life, even though they're not the ones we think about most.” ThinkingWorldNovelSuccessfulEvolutionJokesPersist Author:Brian Boyd
“It seems to me to make as much sense to talk about literature as a large-scale human phenomenon without bringing in evolution as it does to engage in cosmology while you're thinking the universe is still geocentric.” ThinkingUniverseLiteratureEvolutionPhenomenonCosmology Author:Brian Boyd
“Popper and Nabokov are very different people in some ways - and I'm ready to devote large chunks of my life to both of them. Popper didn't think much of words but thought ideas mattered, and Nabokov didn't think much of ideas, but words mattered, and so on. But both of them had a sense that this is a world of infinite discovery, unending discovery. That quest to discover more in any direction is what I think drives me, and what drives humans, when they're doing the most interesting things.” PeopleThinkingWorldDifferentInterestingInfiniteMost Interesting Author:Brian Boyd
