"The pattern of sex differences found in our species mirrors that found in most mammals and in many other animals. As such, considerations of parsimony suggest that the best explanation for the human differences will invoke evolutionary forces common to many species, rather than social forces unique to our own. When we find the standard pattern of differences in other, less culture-bound creatures, we inevitably explain this in evolutionary terms. It seems highly dubious, when we find exactly the same pattern in human beings, to say that, in the case of this one primate species, we must explain it in terms of an entirely different set of causes — learning or cumulative culture — which coincidentally replicates the pattern found throughout the rest of the animal kingdom. Anyone who wishes to adopt this position has a formidable task in front of them. They must explain why, in the hominin lineage uniquely, the standard evolved psychological differences suddenly became maladaptive, and thus why natural selection “wiped the slate clean” of any biological contribution to these differences. They must explain why natural selection eliminated the psychological differences but left the correlated physical differences intact. And they must explain why natural selection would eliminate the psychological differences and leave it all to learning, when learning simply replicated the same sex differences anyway. How could natural selection favor extreme flexibility with respect to sex differences if that flexibility was never exercised and was therefore invisible to selection?"
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
AtheistsPeople from WellingtonAcademics from New ZealandPhilosophers from New ZealandPsychologists from New Zealand
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
(pp. 142-143)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Steve_Stewart-Williams
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Steve Stewart-Williams
Steve Stewart-Williams (born 1971) is a Professor of Psychology in the School of Psychology at the University of Nottingham Malaysia, and author of the books Darwin, God and the Meaning of Life (2010) and The Ape That Understood the Universe (2018). He was born in Wellington, New Zealand. He studied at Massey university, where he completed a PhD in psychology and philosophy.
116 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Steve Stewart-Williams →
Related Quotes
"Jane Goodall once wrote about a female chimpanzee who mated with more than fifty males in a single day. This is uncom…"
"As a result of cumulative culture, we have ideas in our heads that are orders of magnitude smarter than we are."
"As far as we know, no woman in the history of the species has ever given birth and thought: “Wait a minute! How do I …"
"A well-designed parental male will tend to end up investing in his own offspring, rather than the offspring of his go…"
"This is the irritating reality of the human condition: Whatever we do, we’re left with unfulfilled desires. Human bei…"
"What accounts for psychologists’ kin-blindness – a blindness so profound it would lead to the vaporization of lazy al…"
"[W]hy would natural selection give men the physical equipment needed for violence but not the psychological machinery…"
"By clamping down on male aggression, culture may make the sex difference in aggression smaller than it would otherwis…"
"Contrary to stubborn anthropological myth, people everywhere fall in love... the idea that romantic love is an invent…"
"Humans are chimpanzees reciting Shakespeare – dunces with the technology of geniuses."