Home / Quotes / Quote by John Tooby

Quote by John Tooby

“The assertion that 'culture' explains human variation will be taken seriously when there are reports of women war parties raiding villages to capture men as husbands, or of parent cloistering their sons but not their daughters to protect their sons' virtue, or when cultural distributions for preferences concerning physical attractiveness, earning power, relative age and so on show as many cultures with bias in one direction as in the other.”

Quote by John Tooby

Author

John Tooby is a renowned psychologist, born on July 26, 1952. He is known for his extensive research in evolutionary psychology, particularly on the evolutionary foundations of human behavior and cognition. Tooby's academic career spans multiple disciplines, including anthropology, cognitive science, and psychology. more

You May Also Like

“Each person decides in early childhood how he will live and how he will die... His trivial behavior may be decided by reason, but his important decisions have already been made: what kind of person he will marry, how many children he will have, what kind of bed he will die in... It is incredible to think, at first, that man's fate, all his nobility and all his degradation, is decided by a child no more than six years old, and usually three... (but) it is very easy to believe by looking at what is happening in the world today, and what happened yesterday, and seeing what will happen tomorrow.”

“Genetically influenced behavior is not necessarily good and not necessarily unchangeable. Explanations of bad behavior that appeal to genes do not absolve a person any more than do explanations that appeal to upbringing.”

Persons Evolution Behavior Appeals Explanation Genes Upbringing Unchangeable Bad Behavior

Author:Steven Pinker

“Where it is in his own interest, every organism may reasonably be expected to aid his fellows. Where he has no alternative, he submits to the yoke of communal servitude. Yet given a full chance to act in his own interest, nothing but expediency will restrain him from brutalizing, from maiming, from murdering his brother, his mate, his parent, or his child. Scratch an 'altruist' and watch a 'hypocrite' bleed.”

May Children Given Parent Interest Chance Watches Brother Evolution Fellows Expected Aids Alternatives Mates Submit Organisms Scratches Hypocrite Servitude Yoke Expediency

Author:Michael Ghiselin

“Don't be impatient with me. Bear in mind that I hop around among all of you big beasts like a harmless and helpless frog who is afraid of being squashed.”

Mind Bigs Bears Fame Beast Hops Helpless Impatient Frogs

Author:Paul Ehrenfest

“I admit that Mendeleev has two wives, but I have only one Mendeleev.”

Two Science Wife Fame Biographies

Author:Alexander III of Russia

“The Second Amendment's language and historical and philosophical background demonstrated that it was designed to guarantee individuals the possession of certain kinds of arms for three purposes: (1) crime prevention or what we would today describe as self-defense; (2) national defense; and (3) preservation of individual liberty.”

“Evolution answers some questions but reveals many more questions. Some of these questions at this stage appear to be unanswerable in the light of present scientific knowledge. In common parlance: `The more you know, the more you know you don't know.”

Knows Light Answers Common Stage Evolution Scientific Knowledge

Author:Barry Price

“It looks to me as if Darwinians are like someone who, having observed that tugboats sometimes maneuver ocean liners in tight places by directing high-pressure streams of water at them, concludes that he has discovered the method by which the liners cross the Atlantic.”

Ifs Looks Sometimes Water Evolution Ocean Crosses Pressure Method Streams

Author:Peter van Inwagen

“Archaeopteryx probably cannot tell us much about the early origins of feathers and flight in true protobirds because Archaeopteryx was, in the modern sense, a bird.”

Modern Evolution Bird Flight Feathers

Author:Alan Feduccia

“The fact of evolution is the backbone of biology, and biology is thus in the peculiar position of being a science founded on an unproved theory -is it then a science or a faith? Belief in the theory of evolution is thus exactly parallel to belief in special creation - both are concepts which believers know to be true but neither, up to the present, has been capable of proof.”

Knows Has Beens Facts Belief Special Creation Position Theory Evolution Capable Concepts Proof Believer Being True Biology Peculiar Parallels Backbone Theory Of Evolution

Author:L. Harrison Matthews