The way to understand how different species evolved is to think about the niches that they fill in an ecosystem - basically, how they make a living.
Interpretation
Species evolution is shaped by their roles within ecosystems and how they survive.
In this quote, Steven Pinker emphasizes that to grasp the process of evolution among various species, one must consider the specific roles or 'niches' they occupy within their ecosystems. Understanding how species adapt and thrive based on their ecological functions provides insight into the broader narrative of evolution, illustrating the interconnectedness of life forms and their environments.
In practice
In a biology class discussing evolution and ecosystems, this quote can help illustrate the concept of niches.
The foundation of individual rights is the assumption that people have wants and needs and are authorities on what those wants and needs are. If people's stated desires were just some kind of erasable inscription or reprogrammable brainwashing, any atrocity could be justified.
The linguistic clumsiness of tourists and students might be the price we pay for the linguistic genius we displayed as babies, just as the decrepitude of age in the price we pay for the vigor of youth.
If we are not to abandon values such as peace and equality, or our commitments to science and truth, then we must pry these values away from claims about our psychological makeup that are vulnerable to being proven false.
We adults protect ourselves with laws, police, workplace regulations and social norms and there is no conceivable reason why children should be left more vulnerable, other that laziness or callousness in considering what life is like from their point of view.
The idea that children are passive repositories to be shaped by their parents has been massively overstated. A child's peer group is a far greater determinant of its development and achievements than parental aspiration.
Reason is non-negotiable. Try to argue against it, or to exclude it from some realm of knowledge, and you've already lost the argument, because you're using reason to make your case. ... We don't "believe" in reason.
Does anyone believe that the difference between the Lebesgue and Riemann integrals can have physical significance, and that whether say, an airplane would or would not fly could depend on this difference? If such were claimed, I should not care to fly in that plane.
There are no black holes - in the sense of regimes from which light can't escape to infinity. There are however apparent horizons which persist for a period of time.
The slow rejection of the foreign skin grafts fascinated me. How could the host distinguish another person's skin from his own?
An Experiment, like every other event which takes place, is a natural phenomenon; but in a Scientific Experiment the circumstances are so arranged that the relations between a particular set of phenomena may be studied to the best advantage.
Mathematics is the language with which God has written the universe.
I had a bet with Gordon Kane of Michigan University that the Higgs particle wouldn't be found.
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