Words have a genealogy and it's easier to trace the evolution of a single word than the evolution of a language.

It stands to reason that we love chocolate cake because it is sweet. Guys go for girls like this because they are sexy. We adore babies because they're so cute. And, of course, we are amused by jokes because they are funny. This is all backwards. It is. And Darwin shows us why.

... there could be talking bunny rabbits, spiders who write English messages in their webs, and for that matter, melancholy choo-choo trains. There could be, I suppose, but there aren't-so my theory doesn't have to explain them.

Postmodernism, the school of 'thought' that proclaimed 'There are no truths, only interpretations' has largely played itself out in absurdity, but it has left behind a generation of academics in the humanities disabled by their distrust of the very idea of truth and their disrespect for evidence, settling for 'conversations' in which nobody is wrong and nothing can be confirmed, only asserted with whatever style you can muster.

It is not so much that we, using our brains, spin our yarns, as that our brains, using yarns, spin us.

I'm the guy who reputedly denies that people experience colors or pains, and thinks that thermostats think — just ask my critics.

There is no such thing as philosophy-free science, just science that has been conducted without any consideration of its underlying philosophical assumptions.