Nationalism and racism, to take two examples, are the culturally nurtured outgrowths of simple tribalism. - Edward O. Wilson

In the process of natural selection, then. any device that can insert a higher proportion of certain genes into subsequent generations will come to characterize the species.

Daily life is a compromised blend of posturing for the sake of role-playing and of varying degrees of self-revelation. Under stressful conditions even the "true" self cannot be precisely defined, as Erving Goffman observes. ...Little wonder that the identity crisis is a major source of modern neuroticism, and that the urban middle class aches for a return to a simpler existence.

Piaget, who was originally trained as a biologist, views intellectual development as an interaction of an inherited genetic program with the environment. It is no coincidence that he calls this conception "genetic epistemology," in effect the study of the hereditary unfolding of understanding.