I sometimes try to imagine what would have happened if we’d known the bonobo first and the chimpanzee only later—or not at all. The discussion about human evolution might not revolve as much around violence, warfare and male dominance, but rather around sexuality, empathy, caring and cooperation. What a different intellectual landscape we would occupy!
Interpretation
The quote reflects on how the framing of human evolution could change based on the first primate species studied.
Frans De Waal's quote poses a thought-provoking idea about how perceptions of human evolutionary history are shaped by the focus on certain primates, like chimpanzees, which emphasize themes of aggression and dominance. If bonobos had been the primary focus, known for their peaceful and cooperative behaviors, discussions around our evolution might highlight empathy and social bonding instead, leading to a vastly different understanding of human nature.
In practice
In a lecture about primate behavior, this quote could illustrate alternative perspectives in evolutionary discussions.
As in a Russian doll, however, the outer layers always contain an inner core. Instead of evolution having replaced simpler forms of empathy with more advanced ones, the latter are merely elaborations on the former and remain dependent on them. This also means that empathy comes naturally to us. It is not something we only learn later in life, or that is culturally constructed.
Sometimes I read about someone saying with great authority that animals have no intentions and no feelings, and I wonder, 'Doesn't this guy have a dog?'
Experiments with animals have long been handicapped by our anthropocentric attitude: We often test them in ways that work fine with humans but not so well with other species.
Being both more systematically brutal than chimps and more empathetic than _x000D_ bonobos, we are by far the most bipolar ape. Our societies are never completely peaceful, never completely competitive, never ruled by sheer selfishness, and never perfectly moral.
If you look at human society, it is very easy, of course, to compare our warfare and territoriality with the chimpanzee. But that's only one side of what we do. We also trade, we intermarry, we allow each other to travel through our territory. There's an enormous amount of cooperation.
Human morality is unthinkable without empathy.
The Yankees, the first mechanicians in the world, are engineers - just as the Italians are musicians and the Germans metaphysicians - by right of birth. Nothing is more natural, therefore, than to perceive them applying their audacious ingenuity to the science of gunnery.
Of course, we would love to know more about the exact moment of Big Bang, but interposing an outside intelligence does nothing to add to that knowledge, as we still know nothing about the creation of that intelligence.
Something can be real - actually existing, not merely illusory - and yet not be fundamental. Scientists used to think that heat, for example, was a fluidlike substance called 'caloric' that flowed from hot objects to colder ones.
One of the pleasures of looking at the world through mathematical eyes is that you can see certain patterns that would otherwise be hidden.
If I could explain it to the average person, it wouldn't have been worth the Nobel Prize.
Taking mathematics from the beginning of the world to the time when Newton lived, what he had done was much the better half.
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