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.
Modern agriculture is the use of land to convert petroleum into food.
If your payloads cost hundreds of millions of dollars, they actually cost more than the launch. It puts a lot of pressure on the launch vehicle not to change, to be very stable. Reliability becomes much more important than the cost. It's hard to get off of that equilibrium.
The energy requirements for interstellar travel are so great that it is inconceivable to me that any creatures piloting their ships across the vast depths of space would do so only in order to play games with us over a period of decades. If they want to make contact, they would make contact; if not, they would save their energy and go elsewhere.
The belief is growing on me that the disease is communicated by the bite of the mosquito... She always injects a small quantity of fluid with her bite - what if the parasites get into the system in this manner.
For me, arguably the story of telomeres and telomerase began thousands of years ago, in the cornfields of the Maya highlands of Central America.
Science is nothing, but trained and organized common sense.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.