Sign in with Facebook
Will Byrnes's Reviews > The Moral Animal: Why We Are the Way We Are - The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology
The Moral Animal: Why We Are the Way We Are - The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology
by
by
Will Byrnes's review
bookshelves: all-time-favorites-non-fiction, favorites, brain-candy
Dec 15, 2008
bookshelves: all-time-favorites-non-fiction, favorites, brain-candy
This is one of those seminal books (to me at least) that has a lot to say about the nature of human relationships.
Quotes:
p 36 - ...while there are various reasons why it could make Darwinian sense for a woman to mate with more than one man (maybe the first man was infertile, for example) there comes a time when having more sex just isn't worth the trouble. Better to get some rest or grab a bite to eat. For a man, unless he's really on the brink of collapse or starvation, that time never comes. Each new partner offers a very real chance to get more genes into the next generation - a much more valuable prospect, in the Darwinian calculus, than a nap or a meal. As the evolutionary psychologists martin Daly and Margo Wilson have succinctly put it: for males "there is always the possibility of doing better."
There is a sense in which a female can do better too, but it has to do with quality, not quantity. Giving birth to a child involves a huge commitment of time, not to mention energy and nature has put a low ceiling on how many such enterprises she can undertake. So each child, from her (genetic) point of view, is an extremely precious gene machine. Its ability to survive and then, in turn, produce its own young gene machines is of mammoth importance. It makes Darwinian sense, then, for a woman to be selective about the man who is going to help her build each gene machine.
p 38
whatever the ancestral environment was like, it wasn't much like the environment we're in now. We aren't designed to stand on crowded subway platforms, or to live in suburbs next door to people we never talk to, or to get hired and fired, or to watch the evening news. This disjunction between the contexts of our design and our lives is probably responsible for much psychopathology, as well as much suffering of a less dramatic sort.
Quotes:
p 36 - ...while there are various reasons why it could make Darwinian sense for a woman to mate with more than one man (maybe the first man was infertile, for example) there comes a time when having more sex just isn't worth the trouble. Better to get some rest or grab a bite to eat. For a man, unless he's really on the brink of collapse or starvation, that time never comes. Each new partner offers a very real chance to get more genes into the next generation - a much more valuable prospect, in the Darwinian calculus, than a nap or a meal. As the evolutionary psychologists martin Daly and Margo Wilson have succinctly put it: for males "there is always the possibility of doing better."
There is a sense in which a female can do better too, but it has to do with quality, not quantity. Giving birth to a child involves a huge commitment of time, not to mention energy and nature has put a low ceiling on how many such enterprises she can undertake. So each child, from her (genetic) point of view, is an extremely precious gene machine. Its ability to survive and then, in turn, produce its own young gene machines is of mammoth importance. It makes Darwinian sense, then, for a woman to be selective about the man who is going to help her build each gene machine.
p 38
whatever the ancestral environment was like, it wasn't much like the environment we're in now. We aren't designed to stand on crowded subway platforms, or to live in suburbs next door to people we never talk to, or to get hired and fired, or to watch the evening news. This disjunction between the contexts of our design and our lives is probably responsible for much psychopathology, as well as much suffering of a less dramatic sort.
Sign into Goodreads to see if any of your friends have read
The Moral Animal.
Sign In »
Reading Progress
Started Reading
February 1, 2000
–
Finished Reading
December 15, 2008
– Shelved
December 15, 2008
– Shelved as:
all-time-favorites-non-fiction
January 28, 2011
– Shelved as:
favorites
November 2, 2012
– Shelved as:
brain-candy
Comments Showing 1-18 of 18 (18 new)
date
newest »
newest »
I read this long before I began writing reviews, but it is one of the most fascinating things I have read, one of my all time faves. Go for it!
Well Will, I've purchased the hardback. This to me is one of those books that I need to have...My sort of book.Thank you....
Will, Well I've started this today and I'll let you know how it goes. It does look rather exciting I must say.
Will, I picked the same quotes. I love this book and have been reading it in bits as I have time for a paper on political sex scandals in. the US. Two questions interest me: Why does US society monitor the morals of politicians and why do politicians risk adulterous relationships in light of the consequences? Evolutionary psychology is the most fruitful framework for answering these questions so far.
Lynne wrote: "Will, Well I've started this today and I'll let you know how it goes. It does look rather exciting I must say."I look forward to seeing what you think
I just came across your review when you recommended it to someone who had read The Evolution of God, which I read around 2009 I guess. This is actually a longish review for you back in 2008 which I take as a further testament to your regard for it!Has Wright faded away somewhat? For a while he was involved in all sorts of cultural debates and so forth, but lately I've heard less of him--but could be just that I haven't been looking for him.
Jonothan Haidt had something to say on the issue of cultural evolution in The Righteous Mind, and now a copy of E. O. Wilson's 2012 book The Social Conquest of Earth has fallen into my hands, though heaven only knows when/if I'll get to it!
social and natural science perceptions are What I desperately want to engage. My understanding about them Is bleak. Really want to nurture my beliefs with such books. But the energy is too limited, and was overwhelmed by the reading list; the feeling left me restless and rather Panicked. Feeling bad:（.
This is a great book. It is probably worth considering returning to it in a few years.
I like the Quotations they are really good Great review Will
Well, thank science for the Pill. Now we don't just have to be reproductive machines, and we can have some of that fun, too. Yippee!
I tend to disagree with pg 38 - if we've evolved in other ways, surely we've evolved in this area, no?It's also an interesting choice of words to say we've been "designed" - does the author ever say who or what they think is (or was) behind the process?
One last question! Does the rest of the book have the same tone as the quotes you included? (Thanks, by the way! I love reading excerpts when I'm considering a book.)
I expect Wright meant "designed" in the p38 quote sarcastically. His book is about natural selection, the design to which he refers being the notion that human biology was set by a creator, rather than changing over time in response to changing conditions. He also points out that the bodies that humans evolved to have over our relatively brief period as a distinct species are less than optimally designed for the lives we live today.
Interesting that while our brains and spines have quickly evolved to think and speak and walk and create wonders like subways, skyscrapers, ventilators, even ways to transplant a heart into someone else's body, that the rest of our bodies are still light years away from adjusting to the things that we ourselves have created. Does he address things like this, or is he more focused on the emotional and psychological part?
That is not what this book is about. I suggest checking out a very worthwhile and actual review by Steven Pinker, in the New York Times Book Review
Will wrote: "That is not what this book is about. I suggest checking out a very worthwhile and actual review by Steven Pinker, in the New York Times Book Review"Ah thanks, I'll check it out.
Just popping in to slightly readjust the description of how evolution/selection works. It's not that A Man decided to impregnate many woman because it will spread his genes further: there is no decision involved, but simply that the men who impregnate many women spread the genes of men who impregnate a lot of women... Likewise, it's not that A Woman decided to have fewer babies and stay healthy, it's that the women who have fewer babies are in better health and therefore their babies survive and pass on the genes of women who take more time between babies... no decisions.
Thanks for that
This is an excellent review.
The book looks my type of "read" and I'm going to see if I can get the "Home Front" to buy it for me as a present.