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Evolutionary Biology Quotes

Browse 96 quotes about Evolutionary Biology.

Evolutionary Biology Quotes

“Happiness is an adaptation which, in times past, motivated us to seek that which was good for us. Our happiness-seeking circuitry, long evolved in situations where sugar, comfort, abundance, and safe thrills were rare, is now on overdrive, helping us find that which markets have made ubiquitous. So we need to reschool our happiness-seeking circuitry, train it to find and appreciate legitimately rare or valuable things. Sugar, comfort, abundance, and safe thrills are no longer legitimately rare or valuable. Love and relationship, and the time and space to exist in ways not dictated by external forces—these are increasingly rare, and have always been valuable.”

HappinessDesirePsychologyDesiresEvolutionary BiologyWhat We WantWhat We Need
Author:Heather E. Heying
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“Even after agriculture was invented starting about 10,000 years ago, most farmers still lived in small villages, labored daily to produce enough food for themselves, and never imagined an existence now common in places like Tampa, Florida, where people take for granted cars, toilets, air-conditioning, cell phones, and an abundance of highly processed, calorie-rich food.”

MenWomenEvolutionBiologyAgricultureHomo SapiensEvolutionary Biology
Book:The Story of the Human Body: Evolution, Health, and Disease
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“Yet as good as things are, they could be much better, and there are plenty of reasons to worry about the human body's future. Apart from potencial threats posed by climate change, we are also confronting a massive population boom combined with an epidemiological transition. As more people are living longer and fewer are dying young from diseases caused by infections or insufficient food, exponentially middle-aged and elderly people are suffering from chronic noninfectious diseases that used to be rare or unknown.”

MenWomenEvolutionBiologyAgricultureHomo SapiensEvolutionary Biology
Book:The Story of the Human Body: Evolution, Health, and Disease
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“Remember that for millions of years natural selection favored women who devoted whatever extra energy they had toward reproduction, partly through the action of reproductive hormones such as estrogen. Natural selection, however, never geared women's bodies for coping with long-term surfeits of energy, estrogen, and other related hormones. As a result, women today are very different and vastly more at risk of developing cancer than mothers from long ago because their bodies are still functioning as they evolved to have as many surviving children as possible.”

WomenEvolutionCancerAnthropologyHomo SapiensReproductionEvolutionary Biology
Book:The Story of the Human Body: Evolution, Health, and Disease
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“Evolution is the long blur, a constant and living flow of branching relationships. One thing is always connected to another and another. Having no regard for our love of labels and organization, life rolls on as a continual stream of organic matter. The important thing about the origin of the human brain is not pinpointing some specific time, event, or fossil to declare a beginning in order to satisfy our desire for order. What matters is that we understand the process from which it emerged and how deeply rooted the modern human brain is to its past.”

ThinkingScienceHumanityEvolutionHumanThinking QuotesEvolutionary Biology
Book:Good Thinking: What You Need to Know to be Smarter, Safer, Wealthier, and Wiser
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“After the dinosaurs, it is us the humans that have become the dominant species on planet earth. However, unlike the dinosaurs, we have become the rulers of this planet not by ferociousness, but by intelligence, even though we are no less ferocious than them.”

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Author:Abhijit Naskar
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“I have every expectation that cancer will become known as the disease of human evolution trying and failing to adapt to a significantly changed environment.”

TryingHumanityKnownEnvironmentFailingChangedEvolutionDiseaseHumanEnvironmentalCancerAdaptationEvolutionary PsychologyEnvironmentalismHuman DevelopmentExpectationAdaptingBecomeCancer QuotesDiseasesEvolutionary BiologyEveryEnvironmental DegradationAdaptDisease PreventionEnvironmental HistoryAdaptability QuotesEvolutionary ProcessSignificantlyAdaptionEvolutionary EnlightenmentKnown Quotes
Author:Steven Magee
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“We Are All Racist (The Sonnet) If we are still uncomfortable to face, The roots of racism, how can we uproot racism! Unless we recognize our tendency for division, How can we ever be the cause of universalism! The fundamental fact of human nature is, We are a septic tank of prehistoric biases. Sectarianism comes to us far too easily, For we are all fundamentally racist. Cruelty is the mainspring of survival in the wild, So our brain leans more towards cruelty than kindness. Millions of years of conditioning won't vanish overnight, We must self-regulate with our newly developed conscience. The end of racism starts with the recognition of racism. We are civilized only when we recognize our uncivilization.”

Human NatureNeuroscienceBlack Lives MatterDiversity And InclusionSystemic RacismEvolutionary BiologyPrimitive Human BehaviorCognitive PsychologyImplicit BiasSocial Justice Poem
Book:Bulldozer on Duty
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“Handcrafted Humanity Sonnet 95 Nature always tries to trick us most strongly, Into being a filthy bunch of egotistical morons. If we stand true to our conviction of community, No cockeyed canine is gonna dictate our terms. Survival of the fittest is the motto of animal, Sacrifice for the helpless is the motto of human. The decision is to be made by none but you, What'll you spend your life as - animal or human! Let's not spend another day with cold shoulder, Let us rather put all of our shoulders together. Only then we will be a tad stronger than history, And rise as the mightiest descendant of Nature. To conquer ourselves is to conquer space and time. We live the fullest when we live as people's lifeline.”

Human NatureHumanismSelfishnessEvolutionary PsychologySelfless ServiceDarwinismHumanist PoetrySurvival Of The FittestEvolutionary BiologyAnimal Nature
Book:Handcrafted Humanity: 100 Sonnets For A Blunderful World
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“Nature programmed the neurobiological processes of early love to appear as something beyond the primitive sexual cravings of the genitals. So, from an evolutionary standpoint, it all leads to copulation and reproduction, but from the perspective of the individual who has recently fallen head over heels in love with someone, it is mostly about a sensation of warmth and delight, and rarely of sexual nature.”

LoveTruthLove QuotesHuman NatureEvolutionRelationship QuotesDatingBrainy QuotesLove Quotes And SayingsSexualityTruth QuotesHuman BehaviorFlirtingEvolutionary PsychologyAdulteryDating QuotesScience QuotesSex AppealEvolutionary BiologyPrimitive Human BehaviorScience Of MindSexy HumorFemale SexualityMale Female RelationshipsSexy QuotesMale ThinkingDating 101
Book:Love, God & Neurons: Memoir of a scientist who found himself by getting lost
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“Love begins with the stage of subconscious primitive lust and attraction. I’m saying primitive because at this very early stage there is really no difference between primitive man and modern man.”

LoveTruthLove QuotesHuman NatureEvolutionRelationship QuotesDatingBrainy QuotesLove Quotes And SayingsSexualityTruth QuotesHuman BehaviorFlirtingEvolutionary PsychologyDating QuotesScience QuotesSex AppealEvolutionary BiologyPrimitive Human BehaviorScience Of MindSexy HumorFemale SexualityMale Female RelationshipsSexy QuotesMale ThinkingDating 101
Book:Love, God & Neurons: Memoir of a scientist who found himself by getting lost
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“Males of all species are made for wooing females, and females typically choose among their suitors. If you take a closer look, you can observe such behavior all around you. The beautiful bird chirping outside your window. It’s a mating call. That pretty little bird is trying to attract a potential mate, so that it can propagate its genes. Why does the peacock have such beautiful feathers? It is to attract a healthy female. He as well is trying to propagate his genes. Even we humans, are not much different from the rest of the animal kingdom when it comes to attracting potential mates. When women dress up for their night out at the club, they are doing so to look attractive. This is a subconscious evolutionary desire to attract as many potential mates as possible.... While women tend to grab attention with their looks, men on the other hand, tend to attract as many potential females as possible, by showing off their resources. When a man shows off with his fancy car, expensive gold watch and suit, or flexes his muscles and brags about how many credit cards he owns, he’s doing so to make himself desirable by healthy women, in order to propagate his genes. It is all in the pursuit of reproduction.”

LoveTruthLove QuotesHuman NatureEvolutionRelationship QuotesDatingBrainy QuotesLove Quotes And SayingsSexualityTruth QuotesHuman BehaviorFlirtingEvolutionary PsychologyAdulteryDating QuotesScience QuotesSex AppealEvolutionary BiologyPrimitive Human BehaviorScience Of MindSexy HumorFemale SexualityMale Female RelationshipsSexy QuotesMale ThinkingDating 101
Book:What is Mind?
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“Across generations, wariness of new individuals, groups, and ideas was built into the circuits of the human brain's alarm response because those who had this wariness were more likely to survive to reproduce. It was just safer to assume danger- and expect the worst- than to count on the kindness of strangers.”

KindnessEvolutionEmpathyEvolutionary PsychologyHuman BrainStrangersEvolutionary BiologyFear Of The UnknownKindness Of Strangers
Book:Born for Love: Why Empathy Is Essential--and Endangered
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“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.”

MindHomo SapiensCognitionEvolutionary BiologyEvolutionary PsychopathologyEvolutionaryEvolutionary MismatchEvolutionary Anthropology
Book:Evolutionary Psychopathology: A Unified Approach
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“[Rising diversity and complexity are] the predicted outcome for evolution in the total absence of selection and other forces. They are the zero-force expectation. The reason is simply that variation arises in biological systems, and when heritable it accumulates, with the result that variances tend to increase. And both diversity and complexity are aspects of variance.”

EvolutionDiversityComplexitySelectionEvolutionary BiologyVariance
Book:Biology's First Law: The Tendency for Diversity and Complexity to Increase in Evolutionary Systems
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“Mankind willfully changing the global electromagnetic radiation environment has created what I expect will become known as the man-made evolution era.”

AgeChangeKnownEnvironmentMankindEvolutionEnvironmentalRadiationGlobalizationCreateEvolutionary PsychologyEnvironmentalismElectromagneticGlobalChangingElectronicsExpectEvolutionary BiologyCreatedGlobalisationEraEnvironmental DegradationRadiation EffectsMankind QuotesMan MadeElectromagnetic RadiationElectromagnetismElectronicWillfullyElectromagnetic WaveEvolutionary ProcessElectronic RevolutionElectromagnetic Theory Of LightMan Made DisastersMan Made DisasterMan Made World
Author:Steven Magee
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“The red lipstick? It's supposed to signal fertility and readiness to mate. Just like the swollen red butt of a baboon. That tight-fitting little dress that shows off your curves? From the standpoint of evolutionary biology, big breasts represent a healthy mate who can feed a lot of offspring. That's why men are programmed to like big tits. When you show off your curves, what you're really doing is advertising to the whole world: "Look at me! I'm a healthy female! I'd be a perfect mate! Come mount me!”

EvolutionDressesBreastsCurvesEvolutionary PsychologyLipstickOffspringDressing UpFertilityDressEvolutionary BiologyCurvyBaboonsBreast ImplantsButtMating RitualsEvolution HumorMating RitualButtsTitsBaboonMating CallCurvy WomanBig Breasts And Wide HipsBreasts Enhancement
Book:Why Men And Women Can't Be Friends
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“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.”

Homo SapiensEvolutionary BiologyEvolutionary PsychopathologyEvolutionaryEvolutionary MismatchEvolutionary Anthropology
Book:Evolutionary Psychopathology: A Unified Approach
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“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.”

MediaFemaleHomo SapiensEvolutionary BiologyEvolutionary PsychopathologyTcaEvolutionaryEvolutionary MismatchEvolutionary Anthropology
Book:Evolutionary Psychopathology: A Unified Approach
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“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.”

MediaNewsHomo SapiensEvolutionary BiologyEvolutionary PsychopathologyEvolutionaryEvolutionary MismatchEvolutionary AnthropologyAlarmism
Book:Evolutionary Psychopathology: A Unified Approach
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“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.”

Homo SapiensEvolutionary BiologyEvolutionary PsychopathologyEvolutionaryEvolutionary MismatchEvolutionary AnthropologyTradeoff
Book:Evolutionary Psychopathology: A Unified Approach
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“If man evolved spontaneously from nothingness to flesh then man must be immortal. Why? Well, man in his development from nothingness to substance did not exist in a controlled environment and so lay prone to countless assaults from elements of his coarse environment. To preserve his viability, he had to ride materially unscathed through all those assaults. So it is reasonable to expect that man must be immune to destruction by all malevolent forces whose vicious tackles he stumbled through in the course of his development from cell to flesh. For how can he in the stoutness of maturity be susceptible to destruction by blows that he absorbed without peril in his infancy?”

EvolutionEvolutionary BiologyScience Vs ReligionEvolution Vs Religion
Author:Agona Apell
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“Fill the world with acid rain clouds and you will be in a new era of evolution, due to the changed electromagnetic frequencies emissions and light emissions from the lightning clouds. A new era of global environmental radiation!”

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Author:Steven Magee
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“Good and evil are both within us. And when our primitive ancestors humanized these natural qualities of the mind, they got two completely opposite supernatural characters. One was the merciful lord almighty and the other was the wicked devil.”

LifeTruthReligiousEvolutionBrainy QuotesPearls Of WisdomTruth QuotesEvolutionary PsychologySocial PsychologyEvolutionary BiologyPrimitive Human BehaviorAboriginal CultureReligion And SciencePrimitive MenPrimitive UrgesAncient CultureBrainy Quotes Life LessonsPrimitive ReligionPrimitive Psyche
Author:Abhijit Naskar
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“What I should have said is that he thinks that there is a conflict between evolutionary biology and theism. Dennett thinks that evolutionary theory shows that it is irrational to believe that God exists; he thinks that the theory has this consequence because he thinks that the Design Argument was the only remotely plausible argument for God’s existence and evolutionary theory destroyed that argument.”

ScienceDesignEvolutionEvolutionary BiologyDaniel DennettDesign ArgumentDesign Argument Debunked
Author:Elliott Sober
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“The factors facilitating the global emergence of pathogens shared between humans and animals are of particular importance because the diseases they induce have had major impacts on both human and animal health. This transfer of pathogens has ocurred for thousands, if not millions, of years and continues today.”

EvolutionAnthropologyVirusEvolutionary BiologyZoologyParasitePathogen
Book:Palaeopathology and Evolutionary Medicine: An Integrated Approach
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“Our species has co-evolved alongside many others to which we were in contact, especially through scavenging, hunting, and then animal husbandry, all of which would have exposed us to novel pathogens and zoonotic diseases. As a species, we had to adapt to these new pathogens without the benefits of modern medicine. The newly emerging diseases of recent decades, while novel in themselves, are but a repeat of patterns which humans have survived over several millennia.”

EvolutionAnthropologyVirusEvolutionary BiologyZoologyParasitePathogen
Book:Palaeopathology and Evolutionary Medicine: An Integrated Approach
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“Today there are almost eight billion people on earth, crowded together and travelling widely -this is 1300 times more than were present when the agricultural revolution began around 10,000 years ago and facilitated the spread of many pathogens.”

EvolutionPopulationAnthropologyDemographicsVirusEvolutionary BiologyZoologyParasitePathogen
Book:Palaeopathology and Evolutionary Medicine: An Integrated Approach
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“Humans have always lived surrounded by potential pathogens. Whether they co-exist relatively harmlessly or become a problem, cause acute or chronic disease and spread slowly or in epidemics has been, and still is, influenced by how we have impacted the environments we share with other animals. Pathogens are opportunists within these environments, capable and ready to take advantage of anything that promotes their transmission.”

EvolutionAnthropologyVirusEvolutionary BiologyZoologyParasitePathogen
Book:Palaeopathology and Evolutionary Medicine: An Integrated Approach
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“Self is an illusory by-product of the brain's response to the environment, with the purpose of survival of life. However, within the subjective realm of the human mind, due to higher brain capacities, the self is capable of creating its own illusory purpose, in an attempt to provide meaning in life.”

PsychologyEvolutionBrainy QuotesMeaning Of LifeNeuroscienceEvolutionary PsychologyNeurologyEvolutionary BiologyPearls Of Life
Book:When Humans Unite: Making A World Without Borders
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“Food processors, dishwashers, vacuum cleaners, and clothes-washing machines have substancially lessened the physical activity required to cook and clean. Air conditioners and central heating have decreased how much energy our bodies spend to maintain a stable body temperature. Countless other devices, such as electric can openers, remote controls, electric razors and suitcases on wheels, have reduced, calorie by calorie, the amount of energy we expend to exist.”

EvolutionAnthropologyObesityHomo SapiensEvolutionary BiologySedentarismFat StudiesErgonomics
Book:The Story of the Human Body: Evolution, Health, and Disease
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