Dominance in an adaptation to anarchy and it serves no purpose in a society that has undergone a civilising process or in an international system regulated by agreements and norms. Anything that deflates the concept of dominance is likely to drive down the frequency of fights between individuals and wars.

Most intellectuals today have a phobia of any explanation of the mind that invokes genetics.

People consider the harms they inflict to be justified and forgettable, and the harms they suffer to be unprovoked and grievous.

You could think of an ecosystem as a bunch of antagonistic arms races, almost: Everything that an animal depends upon for food is the body part of some other animal or plant who would just as soon keep that body part for itself.

An enormous amount of scientific language is metaphorical. We talk about a genetic code, where code originally meant a cipher; we talk about the solar system model of the atom as though the atom were like a sun and moon and planets.

The great appeal of the doctrine that the mind is a blank slate is the simple mathematical fact that zero equals zero.

We can make fun of hockey fans, but someone who enjoys Homer is indulging the same kind of vicarious bloodlust.