Lance Workman > Quotes

“It is said that science has presented humans with three hammer blows to its sense of self-importance. Copernicus taught us that the Earth was not at the centre of the universe; Freud showed us that our instincts are emotional and sexual rather than rational and godly; and Darwin demonstrated that we were descended not from angels but from apes. To this we might add the gene-centred view of life which shows that in many cases we are not the final beneficiaries of our own behaviour; the buck stops not with us but our genes.”
― Lance Workman, Evolutionary Psychology: An Introduction

“The male redback widow spider might choose, on reflection, to forgo indulging the cannibalistic urges of his erstwhile squeeze. But placing the individual at the centre of the action in this way doesn’t always give us the complete picture. Modern evolutionary theory sees the individual as merely an ephemeral and transient bit-player in the theatre of existence, acting out a script that was not of his or her writing, a script written in the language of the genes.”
― Lance Workman, Evolutionary Psychology: An Introduction