Friedrich Nietzsche, who famously gave us the God is dead phrase was interested in the sources of morality. He warned that the emergence of something (whether an organ, a legal institution, or a religious ritual) is never to be confused with its acquired purpose: Anything in existence, having somehow come about, is continually interpreted anew, requisitioned anew, transformed and redirected to a new purpose. This is a liberating thought, which teaches us to never hold the history of something against its possible applications. Even if computers started out as calculators, that doesnt prevent us from playing games on them. (47) (quoting Nietzsche, the Genealogy of Morals)
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About Frans de Waal
Frans de Waal was a 20th-century Dutch primatologist and ethologist. Franciscus Bernardus Maria de Waal was a Dutch-American primatologist and ethologist. He was the Charles Howard Candler Professor of Primate Behavior in the Department of Psychology at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, director of the Living Links Center at the Emory National Primate Research Center, and author of numerous books including Chimpanzee Politics (1982) and Our Inner Ape (2005). Read more on Wikipedia →