The Ape that Understood the Universe Quotes

“any individual who chooses not to have children, or who has childlessness thrust upon them, brings to an end an unbroken chain of life that stretches back four billion years.”
― Steve Stewart-Williams, The Ape that Understood the Universe: How the Mind and Culture Evolve

“But just as a toaster used as a doorstop is still a machine designed to toast bread, you – whatever you choose to do with your life – are still a machine designed to propagate your genes. All of us are. It’s what the priests, the sages and philosophers searched for in vain: the ultimate explanation for our existence.”
― Steve Stewart-Williams, The Ape that Understood the Universe: How the Mind and Culture Evolve

“The philosopher's trap: getting so hung up on definitions that we never leave the starting gate and begin making new discoveries about the world.”
― Steve Stewart-Williams, The Ape that Understood the Universe: How the Mind and Culture Evolve

“the function of any emotion is to motivate behavior.”
― Steve Stewart-Williams, The Ape that Understood the Universe: How the Mind and Culture Evolve

“As we’ll see later, humans may also possess psychological equivalents of the peacock’s tail and the carpenter ant’s propensity to blow itself up – in other words, psychological adaptations designed to attract mates and to facilitate the care of relatives other than offspring. In short, body and mind were fashioned by the same Darwinian forces.”
― Steve Stewart-Williams, The Ape that Understood the Universe: How the Mind and Culture Evolve

“[...] found that altruists have tend to more partners than the chronically self-interested, and that altruism is particularly good at elevating men's sexual success.”
― Steve Stewart-Williams, The Ape that Understood the Universe: How the Mind and Culture Evolve

“Humans appear to have an inbuilt, almost irresistible tendency to divide the world into “us” and “them,” good guys and bad, in-groups and out-groups. We see this everywhere: in politics, in religion, in sports and national pride. For Jesus, the poor and downtrodden were the in-group and the Pharisees and the rich the out-groups; for Marxists (much as for Jesus), the working class was the in-group and the ruling class the out-group; for the Nazis, the Aryan race was the in-group and Jews the main out-group; and for some radical feminists and “lesbian separatists,” women are the in-group and men the out-group.”
― Steve Stewart-Williams, The Ape that Understood the Universe: How the Mind and Culture Evolve

“The case for evolved sex differences is one of the strongest in all of psychology. And yet many psychologists and social scientists dismiss or downplay the idea that evolution played any role at all. Worse than that, in some quarters the idea is considered so abhorrent that merely stating it is treated as something akin to blasphemy. People are forced to perform pointless intellectual handstands and engage in superhuman feats of Orwellian double think, all to avoid acknowledging common sense truths about our species. Those who don’t play ball – those who argue that the sex differences are real and that they almost certainly have an evolutionary origin – run the risk of being labeled sexists or neurosexists or a dozen other slanders. Why, in a community that supposedly values free inquiry and the pursuit of truth, do scholars have to risk censure and personal attacks merely to state the obvious?”
― Steve Stewart-Williams, The Ape that Understood the Universe: How the Mind and Culture Evolve

“Males, it seems, are more aggressive despite culture, not because of it. And this isn’t just the case in the West. In most cultures, boys are taught not to be aggressive, but in all cultures, boys and men are more aggressive anyway.”
― Steve Stewart-Williams, The Ape that Understood the Universe: How the Mind and Culture Evolve

“Just as humans selectively bred fruit to be sweeter and dogs to be friendlier, men selectively bred women to be the better-looking sex.”
― Steve Stewart-Williams, The Ape that Understood the Universe: How the Mind and Culture Evolve

“Most women go through menopause between the ages of forty-five and fifty-five, after which their baby-making days are over. Men, on the other hand, can in principle keep making babies till the day they die. Put simply, women have a narrower window of fertility than men. And that’s why men have evolved to put more weight than women on a partner’s youthfulness: Youthfulness is a more important indicator of fertility in women.”
― Steve Stewart-Williams, The Ape that Understood the Universe: How the Mind and Culture Evolve

“Few tasks are as important in the life of a female animal, whether spider or spider monkey, as selecting a mate. And although no two females are exactly alike, a general trend stands out from the noise like coal in the snow: Females in a wide range of species show a distinct preference for males that can give their offspring a good start in life, either directly (by providing them with protection or resources) or indirectly (by providing them with good genes). Male animals, in contrast, are usually not so picky.”
― Steve Stewart-Williams, The Ape that Understood the Universe: How the Mind and Culture Evolve

“Men, on average, are more interested than women in casual sex and sexual novelty.”
― Steve Stewart-Williams, The Ape that Understood the Universe: How the Mind and Culture Evolve

“Because men often have a stronger desire for sex, and especially sex of the no-strings-attached variety, intercourse is often treated as a resource that women possess and men pursue. Even when the woman enjoys the sex as much as the man, it’s still tacitly seen as a favor that she does for him, rather than the other way round (unless, that is, he’s a movie star).”
― Steve Stewart-Williams, The Ape that Understood the Universe: How the Mind and Culture Evolve

“Gay men and lesbians aren’t the only people who can generally get the kinds of sexual relationships they want. Extremely, unfeasibly attractive people can usually do so as well. These annoying individuals tend not to have to compromise with prospective partners, even if they’re straight, just because they’re such prized commodities. And their romantic histories again back up the claim that men are keener on casual sex than women. Several studies indicate that ridiculously handsome men are more likely than run-of-the-mill men to rack up large numbers of sexual partners. Beautiful women, on the other hand, are not. This isn’t because the latter have trouble attracting partners; it’s because they more often opt for fewer partners and longer-lasting relationships.”
― Steve Stewart-Williams, The Ape that Understood the Universe: How the Mind and Culture Evolve

“The general rule is that whatever females want, males evolve to provide it.”
― Steve Stewart-Williams, The Ape that Understood the Universe: How the Mind and Culture Evolve

“In many species, males pay for sex. For example, among black ticked hanging flies, an amorous male will present a female with a nice, juicy insect and then copulate with her while she distractedly enjoys her meal. If the female finishes before he does, she simply walks away. Game over. If, on the other hand, he finishes first, he snatches the insect away and tries to woo another female with the leftovers.”
― Steve Stewart-Williams, The Ape that Understood the Universe: How the Mind and Culture Evolve

“Mudslinging often begets counter-mudslinging, initiating spiraling mudslinging arms races (consider, for instance, the sorry state of political discourse in many modern nations). Nevertheless, in spite of the risks, mudslinging and name-calling often give a memeplex an advantage.”
― Steve Stewart-Williams, The Ape that Understood the Universe: How the Mind and Culture Evolve

“Like genetic group selection, cultural group selection is controversial. There’s a lot more theory than evidence in the area, and not everyone’s convinced that the idea is sound.”
― Steve Stewart-Williams, The Ape that Understood the Universe: How the Mind and Culture Evolve

“Kin selection theory is one of the great theories in the history of science. It places human beings within an explanatory framework that embraces the rest of the biological world – a framework that links suicidal nest defense in bees and patterns of root growth in plants with the loving bonds and quiet self-sacrifice found in human families. I’m willing to go out on a limb and say that no psychologist or social scientist who lacks a detailed understanding of kin selection theory, and an awareness of the importance of relatedness throughout the living world, can claim to be an expert on behavior. Furthermore, any student of psychology or the social sciences who isn’t taught Hamilton’s ideas in some depth has been short-changed and should immediately ask for a refund.”
― Steve Stewart-Williams, The Ape that Understood the Universe: How the Mind and Culture Evolve

“It’s an unfortunate fact but in a number of ways, most social psychology textbooks present a distorted view of our species. Most notably, they focus almost entirely on interactions among strangers, and thus largely ignore the fact that kin occupy a central place in most people’s lives. This is no minor oversight. Kinship is important not only in the West or even only in our species; it’s important right across the living world. In species that live in groups composed of both kin and non-kin, individuals usually favor the former over the latter. This is just as true of our own species as of any other, and yet many psychologists and psychology textbooks overlook that fact.”
― Steve Stewart-Williams, The Ape that Understood the Universe: How the Mind and Culture Evolve

“Pair-bonding is our primary mating system, at least in as much as that it’s the most common. But polygyny and casual mating are not aberrations; they’re central elements of the human reproductive repertoire.”
― Steve Stewart-Williams, The Ape that Understood the Universe: How the Mind and Culture Evolve

“For men, the key issue is paternity. A well-designed parental male will tend to end up investing in his own offspring, rather than the offspring of his good-looking next-door neighbor. And one way to help ensure that this happens is to be easily moved to jealousy – jealousy that leads you to keep a wary eye on your partner and the good-looking neighbor, to do what you can to keep them apart, and to abandon your partner if she strays, or else make life so unpleasant for her that she never does it again. (I’m not condoning any of this, incidentally; I’m just trying to explain it.) You don’t have to understand the evolutionary logic of your jealousy in order for it to do its job; you only have to feel jealous.”
― Steve Stewart-Williams, The Ape that Understood the Universe: How the Mind and Culture Evolve

“Human beings were falling in and out of love for hundreds of thousands of years before we ever had Hollywood blockbusters or knights in shining armor. We’re just that kind of animal – the kind that falls in love from time to time.”
― Steve Stewart-Williams, The Ape that Understood the Universe: How the Mind and Culture Evolve

“Inbreeding avoidance in plants and nonhuman animals clearly isn’t a product of learning or culture. It’s a product of natural selection. When we find the same thing in our own species, the default assumption ought to be that it’s a product of natural selection for us as well.”
― Steve Stewart-Williams, The Ape that Understood the Universe: How the Mind and Culture Evolve

“Sure enough, many studies find that, just as straight men prefer women with an hourglass figure, straight women prefer men with a V-shaped torso, an athletic physique, and a voice like a low-pitched rumble. Men possessing these attributes tend to lose their virginity earlier, attract more sexual partners, and have more affairs than other men. Conversely, men with a pear-shaped body and a high-pitched, Mickey Mouse voice tend to attract less sexual interest and accumulate less sexual experience.”
― Steve Stewart-Williams, The Ape that Understood the Universe: How the Mind and Culture Evolve

“For all our differences, then, the core of what we find attractive seems to be the same for people everywhere. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but the beholder’s eye has been shaped by natural selection, and thus doesn’t vary greatly from age to age or from culture to culture.”
― Steve Stewart-Williams, The Ape that Understood the Universe: How the Mind and Culture Evolve

“Certainly, for brief or low-commitment relationships, men are more willing than women to relax their standards, if they have to. But for long-term, committed relationships, the sex difference in choosiness largely evaporates. This fact is even reflected in everyday folk wisdom; the common stereotype is that men will sleep with anything that moves, not that they’ll marry or have children with anything that moves. Both sexes are choosy about long-term relationships: the relationships that dominate the romantic lives of the majority of women and men.”
― Steve Stewart-Williams, The Ape that Understood the Universe: How the Mind and Culture Evolve

“In a typical romance novel, woman meets man; man is a bit of a jerk; woman reluctantly finds herself attracted to man; woman eventually tames man and the couple live happily ever after (or happily for the foreseeable future). The gulf between romanceotopia and pornotopia tells us a lot about the sexual psychologies of men and women.”
― Steve Stewart-Williams, The Ape that Understood the Universe: How the Mind and Culture Evolve

“Whereas men are the main consumers of porn, women are the main consumers of romance novels and rom-coms.”
― Steve Stewart-Williams, The Ape that Understood the Universe: How the Mind and Culture Evolve