Robin I.M. Dunbar > Quotes

“It's perhaps not so much how your amygdala is tuned that makes you politically extreme, but that your intrinsic nervousness makes you more responsive to things that might seem to threaten your particular social world. Education probably plays an important role in dampening that response by allowing the brain's frontal lobes (where much of the brain's conscious work goes on) to counteract the emotional responses with a more considered view, so explaining why education is invariably the friend of liberal politics.”
― Robin Dunbar, How Many Friends Does One Person Need?

“There are probably two key aspects of culture that stand out as being uniquely human. One is religion and the other is story-telling. There is no other living species, whether ape or crow, that do either of these. They are entirely and genuinely unique to humans.”
― Robin Dunbar, Human Evolution: A Pelican Introduction

“In primates at least, infanticide seems to have been the crucial factor driving the evolution of monogamous mating systems.”
― Robin Dunbar, Human Evolution: A Pelican Introduction

“In short, it is difficult to see any convincing evidence for anything that will replace religion in human affairs. Religion is a deeply human trait. The content of religion will surely change over the longer term, but, for better or for worse, it is likely to remain with us.”
― Robin I.M. Dunbar, How Religion Evolved: And Why It Endures

“There are, in addition, some other aspects of human culture that will prove to be important. One of these is the social performance of music. To be sure, many other species can be said to produce music, including songbirds and whales, to name but the best known. But only humans seem to engage in music as a social activity. For birds, music seems to be mainly a mate advertising display. Humans use music as a mechanism for community bonding in a way that seems to be quite unique. In modern societies, we may often sit listening politely to music in concert halls, but in traditional societies music-making, song and dance are almost indistinguishable and play a crucially important role. This is something we will also need to account for. What underpins all this cultural activity is, of course, our big brains, and this might ultimately be said to be what distinguishes us from the other great apes.”
― Robin Dunbar, Human Evolution: A Pelican Introduction

“The world of science and the world of everyday experience do not always connect especially well.”
― Robin I.M. Dunbar, How Religion Evolved: And Why It Endures

“What an evolutionary approach does not involve, however, is any notion that all behaviour is genetically determined and that our biology is our destiny.”
― Robin I.M. Dunbar, Evolutionary Psychology: A Beginner's Guide

“Intense religious experiences and crisis conversions seem to be a common response when the contradictions and tragedies of life create existencial threats.”
― Robin I.M. Dunbar, How Religion Evolved: And Why It Endures

“In a word, cooperation allows individuals to succeed (that is, have higher fitness), not groups to succeed against the interests of the individual.”
― Robin I.M. Dunbar, How Religion Evolved: And Why It Endures

“There are probably two key aspects of culture that stand out as being uniquely human. One is religion and the other is story-telling. There is no other living species, whether ape or crow, that do either of these. They are entirely and genuinely unique to humans. We know they must be unique to humans because both require language for their performance and transmission, and only humans have language of sufficient quality to allow that. What is important about both is that they require us to live in a virtual world, the virtual world of our minds. In both cases, we have to be able to imagine that another world exists that is different to, and separate from, the world we experience on an everyday basis. We have to be able to detach ourselves from the physical world, and mentally step back from it. Only when we can do this are we able to wonder whether the world has to be the way it is and why, or imagine other parallel worlds that might exist, whether these are the fictional worlds of story-telling or para-fictional6 spirit worlds. These peculiar forms of cognitive activity are not trivial evolutionary by-products, but capacities that play – and have played – a fundamental role in human evolution.”
― Robin Dunbar, Human Evolution: A Pelican Introduction

“Belief that invisible forces are responsible for what happens in the world, and especially injurious things, is widespread in all cultures and times, and remains prevalent even today.”
― Robin I.M. Dunbar, How Religion Evolved: And Why It Endures

“Sorun, evrimde mükemmel bir mühendislik tasarımı elde etmenin daima imkansız oluşudur. Uzun mesafeler arası yürüyüşün faydalarına erişmek için katlanmak zorunda kaldığımız güçlüklerden biri, zayıf belimizdi.”
― Robin Dunbar, How Many Friends Does One Person Need?

“Çeşitli türdeki insanlara rahip yakası, beyaz laboratuvar önlüğü ya da iri mavi bir kask gibi özel nişanlar veririz. Böylece onlarla daha önce hiç karşılaşmamış bile olsak, karşılaştığımızda nasıl davranacağımızı biliriz. Bu bilgiler olmasa, ilişkilerimizin temelini oluşturmak günlerimizi alabilirdi.”
― Robin Dunbar, How Many Friends Does One Person Need?

“Humans are exceedingly good at recognizing correlations in the world. Indeed, even wild chimpanzees have learned to consume certain medicinal plants that are effective treatments for instestinal parasites. You don't need to know the scientific explanation for a cure to know that it works, and that leaves the way open for religious explanations.”
― Robin I.M. Dunbar, How Religion Evolved: And Why It Endures

“Geleneksel hakları doğa koruyucusu gibi gösteren şey sadece doğaya ne kadar kötü davranırlarsa davransınlar, tek bir yerde çevreye zarar verecek kadar çok sayıda bulunmamış olmalarıdır.”
― Robin Dunbar, How Many Friends Does One Person Need?

“Sternberg defines love in terms of three independent dimensions: intimacy, passion and commitment. Ignoring the passion element as being a peculiarity of romantic relationships, the other two suggest that relationships have two key components: ‘being close’ and ‘feeling close’.”
― Robin Dunbar, Human Evolution: A Pelican Introduction

“The 15-layer was already spoken for, of course, in its capacity as the sympathy group. The 5-layer seemed to function as the support clique – the small group of people willing to provide unstinting emotional, physical and financial help and advice. I often refer to this layer as the shoulders-to-cry-on friends. The 15-layer is probably where you draw most of your everyday social companions from – the people you invite round for a quiet dinner or an evening out at the pub or theatre. I am inclined to think of the 50-layer as your party friends: the people you would invite round for a weekend BBQ or a celebratory birthday or anniversary party. The 150-layer is what you might call the wedding/bar mitzvah/funeral group – the people that would turn up to your once-in-a-lifetime events. It also probably contains most of the children of your closer friends. Otherwise, our women’s network data suggest that this layer is mainly populated by members of your extended family – people whose friendship does not need much regular reinforcement because it is held in place by the ties of kinship.”
― Robin I.M. Dunbar, Friends: Understanding the Power of our Most Important Relationships

“Religion is simply the cost that had to be paid in order to maximize evolutionary fitness.”
― Robin I.M. Dunbar, How Religion Evolved: And Why It Endures