Steve Stewart-Williams - Evolutionary Quotes

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A truly integrative model of sex differences would weave together sociobiological theories and sociocultural theories. SRT [Social Role Theory] simply rejects the sociobiological theories. Indeed, to a large extent, the theory is a reaction against those theories — an attempt to frame an alternative explanation for the findings of evolutionary psychology. It seems reasonable to conclude, then, that Wood and Eagly's biosocial theory is essentially a traditional social theory disguised as a biosocial theory.

Steve Stewart-Williams
Around 13.8 billion years after the Big Bang, and almost four billion years since life first evolved, something strange began to happen: Tiny parts of the universe became conscious, and came to know something about themselves and the universe of which they are a part... Eventually, some of these tiny parts of the universe - the parts we call 'scientists' and 'scientifically-informed laypeople' - came to understand the Big Bang and the evolutionary process through which they had come to exist. After an eternity of unconsciousness, the universe now had some glimmering awareness that it existed and some understanding of where it had come from.

Steve Stewart-Williams
Viewed from an evolutionary perspective, mind is not the cause of the order in nature; mind is an example of the order in nature - something to be explained rather than the explanation for everything else.

Steve Stewart-Williams
Bertrand Russell once pointed out that 'People are more unwilling to give up the word God than to give up the idea for which the word has hitherto stood'. Evolutionary theory may not persuade everyone to give up the word. However, to the extent that it encourages people to alter its meaning beyond recognition, it could be argued that God has nonetheless been a casualty of Darwin's theory.

Steve Stewart-Williams
The idea that humans form pair bonds, and that males often invest in their young, has a long history in biological anthropology. Early incarnations of the idea were criticized for painting an overly simplistic picture, according to which Man the Hunter provisioned his dependent wife and children with meat in a stable nuclear family, suspiciously reminiscent of a 1950s-style Western family. However, with appropriate amendments and qualifications, the idea that pair bonding and biparental care are a central part of our evolutionary endowment appears to be viable.

Steve Stewart-Williams
A similar analysis applies within the realm of mate preferences. Several commentators pointed out that sex differences in human mate preferences are generally quite small... As such, the central claim in EP [evolutionary psychology] should probably be "Human beings evolved to put a fair amount of weight on good looks in a mate" rather than "Men evolved to put more weight on good looks than women." Again, the latter statement is true but potentially misleading. This sounds like a contradiction, but it is not; the statement is misleading if it is given undue weight.

Steve Stewart-Williams
If men in our evolutionary past did not invest in offspring, they would not have evolved strict mate preferences and thus women would be as drab as peahens. The fact that women are not as drab as peahens suggests a long history of male mate choice, which in turn suggests a long history of pair bonding and high male parental investment.

Steve Stewart-Williams
For much of the 20th century, the blank slate view was the dominant view in the social sciences. With the popularization of sociobiology in the 1970s, however, evolutionary approaches to human behavior became the locus of an academic culture war between biologically minded thinkers and advocates of the traditional social science model.

Steve Stewart-Williams
Evolutionary theory answers one of the most profound and fundamental questions human beings have ever asked themselves, a question that has plagued reflective minds for as long as reflective minds have existed in the universe: why are we here?

Steve Stewart-Williams