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The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature (1993)

por Matt Ridley

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2,129247,456 (4.02)71
Two fascinating questions lie at the heart of The Red Queen: Why is Homo sapiens a sexual species, and what implications does this have for human nature? That man is sexual may seem unremarkable, yet in fact not all plants and animals need to have sex to reproduce; simple cloning is practiced by many animals with much greater efficiency. To understand how life evolves, and what benefit sex provides for humans, we must think like the Red Queen in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass, who had to keep running just to stay in place. According to a controversial yet persuasive new theory, evolution is not about progress, but about changing in order to survive. Because humans are in a perpetual battle with the parasites lurking within our bodies, we need to be able to change molecular locks as fast as parasites invent new keys. Sex enables us to alter genetic combinations every generation. Sex, then, is a vital weapon in disease resistance. It enables us to change, not so we progress ahead, but so we avoid falling behind. But what does all this mean for human nature? From a lucid overview of the Red Queen theory, Matt Ridley follows the logic of its argument into the heart of human behavior. For just as the human eye is a product of evolution, so is human nature. Evolutionary theory provides the clues to help us understand fundamental facts about human beings, from our fashion consciousness to our "system of monogamy plagued by adultery." Ridley's probing mind asks a series of provocative questions. Is mankind naturally polygamous like most of our ape relatives? Are men and women mentally different as well as physically, and if so why? Why do people share so many sexual habits with swallows? Are our notions of human beauty arbitrary, or is there method in them? Jumping into the middle of the debate over the definition of "human nature," The Red Queen offers an extraordinary new way of interpreting the human condition and how it has evolved. It throws fresh light on seduction and sexism, beauty and polygamy, attraction and adultery - even intelligence itself. This is a brilliantly written book of considerable intrigue and uncommon sense.… (más)
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Mostrando 1-5 de 24 (siguiente | mostrar todos)
An evolutionary perspective on sex, mating, beauty and other pieces of human nature. Inspires to think about the deep reasons for our desires and behavior. Also the idea of the red queen (constant conflict which spurs evolution but doesn't give any side a hude advantage) can be imaginativly applied to other systems. I'm happy i was introduced to this perspective and i think i need to strengthen my understanding of it with other books. Someone recommended me to read Steve Pinker. ( )
  rubyman | Feb 21, 2024 |
It has changed the way I see the world. ( )
  adze117 | Sep 24, 2023 |
نظرة عن كثب على مسارات تطور الكائنات وكيف أنها مقادة وموجهة بالسعي للتكاثر أكثر من النجاة. كما يناقش تقدم ذكاء البشر ونمو قدراتهم الدماغية على أنها نتيجة للبحث الحثيث عن الشريك المناسب.

«عندما يتعلق الأمر بالنجاة، فإن قدراتنا الدماغية فائضة عن الحاجة. أما بالنسبة للانتخاب الجنسي، فإن ذكاء الإنسان هو كذيل الطاووس؛ أداة إغراء. أي أننا أصبحنا أذكى لأن الأذكياء يحصلون على الشريك المناسب بسهولة أكثر».
«أعطتنا القشرة المخية الحديثة، وهي أحدث إضافة تطورية على الدماغ البشري، القدرة على تحفيز الآخرين وترفيههم - وهو أمر جوهري عند مغازلة شريك في عالمنا الاجتماعي.» ( )
  TonyDib | Jan 28, 2022 |
I might have rated this more highly if I hadn't just come off a spate of reading very similar and slightly better works that incorporate much of its content in pithier form (Daniel Dennett's Darwin's Dangerous Idea and Steven Pinker's How the Mind Works, though those were both written afterwards), yet its central metaphor of sexual selection as arms race is compelling enough that I finished it alongside the superior Dennett and Pinker books anyway. The "red queen" of the title is derived from the famous character in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass who at one point tells Alice that in her world, you have to run as fast as you can just to stay in place. Life is similar, in that hard-won evolutionary advantages are obsoleted almost instantly as competitors adapt to keep up - the book is about how sexuality is used both on a macro level between species, as a gene-shuffler that can provide a leg up over parasites and asexual organisms that are forced to evolve a bit more slowly; and on a micro level within species, as males and females choose different game-theoretic strategies to maximize reproductive fitness. Obviously we're most interested in human sexuality, so the book does not disappoint in its exploration of titillating topics like adultery, incest, homosexuality, polygamy, promiscuity, age differences, dimorphism, fashion, and communication, with plenty of comparisons to analogous behavior in the animal kingdom. There's also plenty of pages on whether all this exciting behavior is due to nature or nurture, which I did not find to be as well-written as Dennett or Pinker's very similar sections in their books (strawmen start popping up in conjunction with loaded subjects like feminism, though this happened somewhat in Pinker's book as well); readers who aren't idiots will be unsurprised that Ridley falls into the sensible "it's both, to some degree, depending on what you're talking about" camp. I found the red queen idea to be a an illuminating metaphor and I enjoyed Ridley's take on sexual selection, even if as a work specifically on evolutionary biology it didn't rise to the level of Richard Dawkins' The Extended Phenotype, which I consider to be one of the best books existing on the subject, but since I read it right next to books that seemed to recapitulate most of its insights in fewer pages I'm not sure I would recommend it above either. It was a better-written treatise on human sexuality than your average porn, though, that's for sure. ( )
1 vota aaronarnold | May 11, 2021 |
The author is at his best when he constantly asks "why?" on issues that may seem mundane or which we take for granted. Why sex not asex? Why does our concept of beauty take on its current form? Why are we mostly monogamous? How has sexual selection shaped out intelligence? My only gripes about this thought provoking read are that it's about a decade old (painfully obvious by the incorrect statistics on the human genome) and Ridley sometimes overstates his conclusions for the sake of the lay audience. ( )
  bsmashers | Aug 1, 2020 |
Mostrando 1-5 de 24 (siguiente | mostrar todos)
There is a wealth of information here, and it is an excellent source for researchers because of its descriptions of studies and its extensive extensive reference section, as well as being an interesting book for a scientifically literate public.
 

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Two fascinating questions lie at the heart of The Red Queen: Why is Homo sapiens a sexual species, and what implications does this have for human nature? That man is sexual may seem unremarkable, yet in fact not all plants and animals need to have sex to reproduce; simple cloning is practiced by many animals with much greater efficiency. To understand how life evolves, and what benefit sex provides for humans, we must think like the Red Queen in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass, who had to keep running just to stay in place. According to a controversial yet persuasive new theory, evolution is not about progress, but about changing in order to survive. Because humans are in a perpetual battle with the parasites lurking within our bodies, we need to be able to change molecular locks as fast as parasites invent new keys. Sex enables us to alter genetic combinations every generation. Sex, then, is a vital weapon in disease resistance. It enables us to change, not so we progress ahead, but so we avoid falling behind. But what does all this mean for human nature? From a lucid overview of the Red Queen theory, Matt Ridley follows the logic of its argument into the heart of human behavior. For just as the human eye is a product of evolution, so is human nature. Evolutionary theory provides the clues to help us understand fundamental facts about human beings, from our fashion consciousness to our "system of monogamy plagued by adultery." Ridley's probing mind asks a series of provocative questions. Is mankind naturally polygamous like most of our ape relatives? Are men and women mentally different as well as physically, and if so why? Why do people share so many sexual habits with swallows? Are our notions of human beauty arbitrary, or is there method in them? Jumping into the middle of the debate over the definition of "human nature," The Red Queen offers an extraordinary new way of interpreting the human condition and how it has evolved. It throws fresh light on seduction and sexism, beauty and polygamy, attraction and adultery - even intelligence itself. This is a brilliantly written book of considerable intrigue and uncommon sense.

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