The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature (ISBN 0-140-16772-2) is a popular science book by Matt Ridley exploring the evolutionary psychology of sexual selection. The Red Queen was one of seven books shortlisted for the 1994 Rhône-Poulenc Prize (now known as the Royal Society Prizes for Science Books), that was eventually won by Steve Jones' The Language of the Genes.
The Red Queen argues that few, if any, aspects of human nature can be understood apart from sex, since human nature is a product of evolution, and evolution in our case is driven specifically by sexual replication.
Read more about The Red Queen: Sex And The Evolution Of Human Nature: Contents
Famous quotes containing the words red, evolution, human and/or nature:
“I was here first introduced to Joe.... He was a good-looking Indian, twenty-four years old, apparently of unmixed blood, short and stout, with a broad face and reddish complexion, and eyes, methinks, narrower and more turned up at the outer corners than ours, answering to the description of his race. Besides his underclothing, he wore a red flannel shirt, woolen pants, and a black Kossuth hat, the ordinary dress of the lumberman, and, to a considerable extent, of the Penobscot Indian.”
—Henry David Thoreau (18171862)
“Historians will have to face the fact that natural selection determined the evolution of cultures in the same manner as it did that of species.”
—Konrad Lorenz (19031989)
“I should say tact was worth much more than wealth as a road to leadership.... I mean that subtle apprehension which teaches a person how to do and say the right thing at the right time. It coexists with very ordinary qualities, and yet many great geniuses are without it. Of all human qualities I consider it the most convenientnot always the highest; yet I would rather have it than many more shining qualities.”
—M. E. W. Sherwood (18261903)
“I think that we may safely trust a good deal more than we do. We may waive just so much care of ourselves as we honestly bestow elsewhere. Nature is as well adapted to our weakness as to our strength.”
—Henry David Thoreau (18171862)