Though Malik sees human beings as a product of evolution, and that universal Darwinist theories have merit when applied to non-human animals – and perhaps "some" merit when applied to human behaviour – he is sceptical about how far they can be applied to human beings. In particular, theories of a biologically-evolved human nature cannot, alone, account for the transformations of behaviour that arose from our immersion in a symbolic world built up out of language and culturally-meaningful relationships. Thus, "the scientific tools with which we investigate animal behaviour are inadequate for understanding human behaviour" (p. 231).