Evolutionary psychology is one of four sciences that are bringing human nature back into the picture.
Interpretation
The quote highlights the significance of evolutionary psychology in understanding human nature.
In this quote, Steven Pinker emphasizes the role of evolutionary psychology as a crucial discipline in the exploration and understanding of human behavior and nature. By stating that it is one of four sciences contributing to this discussion, he advocates for a return to a scientific examination of what it means to be human, integrating biology with psychology to enrich our comprehension of human experiences.
In practice
In a conference about the interplay between biology and psychology, this quote can be used to highlight the importance of integrating evolutionary perspectives.
The foundation of individual rights is the assumption that people have wants and needs and are authorities on what those wants and needs are. If people's stated desires were just some kind of erasable inscription or reprogrammable brainwashing, any atrocity could be justified.
The linguistic clumsiness of tourists and students might be the price we pay for the linguistic genius we displayed as babies, just as the decrepitude of age in the price we pay for the vigor of youth.
If we are not to abandon values such as peace and equality, or our commitments to science and truth, then we must pry these values away from claims about our psychological makeup that are vulnerable to being proven false.
We adults protect ourselves with laws, police, workplace regulations and social norms and there is no conceivable reason why children should be left more vulnerable, other that laziness or callousness in considering what life is like from their point of view.
The idea that children are passive repositories to be shaped by their parents has been massively overstated. A child's peer group is a far greater determinant of its development and achievements than parental aspiration.
Reason is non-negotiable. Try to argue against it, or to exclude it from some realm of knowledge, and you've already lost the argument, because you're using reason to make your case. ... We don't "believe" in reason.
No one trusts a model except the man who wrote it; everyone trusts an observation, except the man who made it.
I believe all complicated phenomena can be explained by simpler scientific principles.
There is, even today, a Flat Earth Society that meets every year to say the Earth is flat. The science about climate change is very clear. There really is no room for doubt at this point.
So we find that the three possible solutions of the great problem of increasing human energy are answered by the three words: food, peace, work... Their scientific meaning and purpose now clear to me: food to increase the mass, peace to diminish the retarding force, and work to increase the force accelerating human movement.
But nature did not deem it her business to make the discovery of her laws easy for us.
When scientifically investigating the natural world, the only thing worse than a blind believer is a seeing denier.
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