Red Queen--The Evolution of Sex and Humanity: The Evolution of Sex and Humanity

Author: Ridley
Publisher:
Publication Date: 2002-12-01
Features: When I was researching animal studies, my friends often asked me how I could spend three years studying just one type of bird. Isn’t a common grouse something so ordinary that there could be so much to study about it? My answer was often perceived as arrogant and harsh: Although the study of human nature has a history of two thousand years, what we know is still very limited. Humans are only slightly special at best, just another kind of mammal. Unless we can understand the evolutionary process of human nature, we cannot fully understand ourselves. For this reason, the first third of this book is dedicated to evolution. Additionally, discussions about human nature are confined to these pages. The foundation of evolution is quite important, but for those who are not interested in the workings of genes, the topic of evolution can indeed be challenging. But please don’t be discouraged. The household motto I grew up with was that you had to finish your main meal before you could enjoy a chocolate cake. Even now, when I enjoy a chocolate cake, I still often feel (though I deliberately ignore) a sense of guilt. If readers find the latter part of this book easier to understand and skip the earlier sections to go straight for the "chocolate cake," I can understand that too. This book is filled with unique insights, but very few of them are my own discoveries. Scientists are busy with their research and have little time to publish their new findings, while science writers often need to explore the depths of their minds to bring these discoveries to the public, which makes them often feel like intellectual plagiarists. If judged by individual chapters, there are many who write more brilliantly than I do, but I am proud that few can achieve such a level of quality throughout the entire book. My role is to synthesize the findings of others and present them to the readers.