"The question is not whether nurture has a role to play, because nobody of any sense has ever gone on record as denying that it does, but whether nature has a role to play at all. When my one-year-old daughter discovered a plastic baby in a toy pram one day while I was writing this chapter, she let out the kinds of delighted squeals that her brother had reserved at the same age for passing tractors. Like many parents, I found it hard to believe that this was purely because of some unconscious social conditioning that we had imposed. Boys and girls have systematically different interests from the very beginning of autonomous behaviour."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Science authorsNon-fiction authors from EnglandJournalists from EnglandBusinesspeople from EnglandLibertarians
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Chapter 15 “Sex” (p. 217)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Matt_Ridley
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Matt Ridley
133 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Matt Ridley →
Related Quotes
"Genes are recipes for both anatomy and behaviour."
"Reproducing sexually must improve an individual’s reproductive success or else sex would not persist. It is increasin…"
"These facts have been first disputed and then actively suppressed by the educational establishment, which continues t…"
"There is a contradiction at the heart of feminism, one that few feminists have acknowledged. You cannot say, first, t…"
"I know of no other way that human nature can have developed except by evolution, and there is now overwhelming eviden…"
"Everything can be inherited except sterility. None of your direct ancestors died childless. Consequently, if we are t…"
"The idea that we were designed by our past was the principal insight of Charles Darwin. He was the first to realize t…"
"The study of human nature must have profound implications for the study of history, sociology, psychology, anthropolo…"
"I have gradually come to realize that almost all of social science proceeds as if 1859, the year of the publication o…"
"In other words, a record of our past is etched into our genes."