#evolutionary

Thinking is computation, I claim, but that does not mean that the computer is a good metaphor for the mind. The mind is a set of modules, but the modules are not encapsulated boxes or circumscribed swatches on the surface of the brain. The organization of our mental modules comes from our genetic program, but that does not mean that there is a gene for every trait or that learning is less important than we used to think. The mind is an adaptation designed by natural selection, but that does not mean that everything we think, feel, and do is biologically adaptive. We evolved from apes, but that does not mean we have the same minds as apes. And the ultimate goal of natural selection is to propagate genes, but that does not mean that the ultimate goal of people is to propagate genes. ↗

— Steven Pinker

#evolutionary-psychology #mind #psychology #design

The British Army and Navy sang a rousing song called "Heart of Oak"; the rebels had writ one to counter it called "The Liberty Song." Both songs blustered of freedom; but both were sung to the same tune. And we, to avoid offense, played the tune without words. ↗

— M.T. Anderson

#freedom

Some people think that evolutionary psychology claims to have discovered that human nature is selfish and wicked. But they are flattering the researchers and anyone who would claim to have discovered the opposite. No one needs a scientist to measure whether humans are prone to knavery. The question has been answered in the history books, the newspapers, the ethnographic record, and the letters to Ann Landers. But people treat it like an open question, as if someday science might discover that it's all a bad dream and we will wake up to find that it is human nature to love one another. ↗

— Steven Pinker

#human-nature #selfishness #dreams

Do not allow yourself to imagine that revolutionary thinking can be propagated by governmental power. ↗

— Vinoba Bhave

#governmental #governmental power #imagine #power #propagated

I have seen the Gore documentary 'An Inconvenient Truth,' just released in the States, and admired the acutely revolutionary delivery of the slideshow assisted talk he has now been giving for some 16 years. ↗

— Saffron Burrows

#admired #assisted #been #delivery #documentary

The whole life of an American is passed like a game of chance, a revolutionary crisis, or a battle. ↗

— Alexis de Tocqueville

#battle #chance #crisis #game #life

Probably it is impossible for humor to be ever a revolutionary weapon. Candide can do little more than generate irony. ↗

— Lionel Trilling

#generate #humor #impossible #irony #little

The biological evolutionary perception of life and of human qualities is radically different from that of traditional religion, whether it's Southern Baptist or Islam or any religion that believes in a supernatural supervalance over humanity. ↗

— E. O. Wilson

#baptist #believes #biological #different #evolutionary

What's been gratifying is to live long enough to see molecular biology and evolutionary biology growing toward each other and uniting in research efforts. ↗

— E. O. Wilson

#biology #each #efforts #enough #evolutionary

Music is more emotional than prose, more revolutionary than poetry. I'm not saying I've got the answers, just a of questions that I don't hear other artists asking. ↗

— Malcolm Wilson

#artists #asking #emotional #got #hear