Nature Via Nurture Quotes

“Henry’s novel The Portrait of a Lady was written in thrall to Darwin’s idea of female choice as a force in evolution.”
― Matt Ridley, The Agile Gene: How Nature Turns on Nurture – Free Will, the Human Genome, and Behavior

“It is when we go beyond instinct that we seem most idiosyncratically human. Perhaps, as Darwin suggested, the difference is one of degree rather than kind; it is quantitative, not qualitative.”
― Matt Ridley, The Agile Gene: How Nature Turns on Nurture – Free Will, the Human Genome, and Behavior

“Either human beings must be more instinctive, or animals must be more conscious than we had previously suspected. The similarities, not the differences, were what caught the attention.”
― Matt Ridley, The Agile Gene: How Nature Turns on Nurture – Free Will, the Human Genome, and Behavior

“Similarity is the shadow of difference. Two things are similar by virtue of their difference from another; or different by virtue of one’s similarity to a third. So it is with individuals.”
― Matt Ridley, The Agile Gene: How Nature Turns on Nurture – Free Will, the Human Genome, and Behavior

“They may direct the construction of the body and brain in the womb, but then they set about dismantling and rebuilding what they have made almost at once—in response to experience.”
― Matt Ridley, The Agile Gene: How Nature Turns on Nurture – Free Will, the Human Genome, and Behavior

“It is genes that allow the human mind to learn, to remember, to imitate, to imprint, to absorb culture, and to express instincts. Genes are not puppet masters or blueprints. Nor are they just the carriers of heredity. They are active during life;”
― Matt Ridley, The Agile Gene: How Nature Turns on Nurture – Free Will, the Human Genome, and Behavior

“La extraordinaria difusión del psicoanálisis entre 1920 y 1970 se debe más al marketing que a los éxitos terapéuticos. Al hablar con los enfermos sobre sus infancia, los analistas ofrecían una humanidad y simpatía hasta entonces inexistentes. Esto les hizo populares cuando las alternativas eran un sueño profundo a base de barbitúricos, el coma insulínico, la lobotomía y las convulsiones provocadas por el choque eléctrico: todas ellas desagradables, adictivas o peligrosas. Al hacer hincapié en el inconsciente y la represión de los recuerdos de la infancia, los psicoanalistas también autorizaban a la psiquiatría a salir del manicomio. En realidad, los psicoanalistas podrían ofrecer ahora sus servicios a aquellos que más que estar enfermos eran desgraciados, y que pagarían bien por la oportunidad de contar la historia de su vida mientras yacían en el diván.

(¿Qué nos hace humanos? - La locura de las causas)”
― Matt Ridley, Nature Via Nurture: Genes, Experience and What Makes Us Human