Yet another study of the evolution of bird beak size. This time in England, where a smaller fraction of some warbler population don't migrate to southern Spain every winter anymore (fools!), but stay in England eating an abundance of food provided by humans. Incipient speciation, I'd say. And also, yet another possible example of domestication. All in only 30 generations.
Under the headline of Evolutionary Bullshit, we get yet another rant against evolutionary psychology based on the assumption that all human behavior and preferences are learned, and on the tired tenet that if the science can be used to justify immoral behavior, then it is wrong. Good grief!
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Hmmm. Well, while E.P. has never been one of my favorite lines of research, the author does a pretty lame job of actually discussing what the discipline is about. Pretty superficial.
ReplyDeleteMy issues with Evolutionary Psychology stem from the fact that they often seem to jump to conclusions without having much to back them up. And the EP folks make some pretty BIG claims--kind of like their sociobiological predecessors. When arguments get really deterministic, well, they don't seem very convincing to me.
Still, I think that the intentions of many sociobiologists and evolutionary psychologists are often misread, and I think that in some ways they are just trying to look at human behavior from a different standpoint. And I am a fan of multiple perspectives and standpoints.
And Silberman's attempt to discredit EP based upon what SOME people have tried to do with it? Baseless and clueless, as you argued. Scientific information is open to manipulation and politics...that's not really news. According to his argument, pretty much all science (anthropology, biology, psychology, ecology, sociology) that has been misused is inherently evil! This is pretty much the same argument that some creationists are trying to push about Darwin and evolution. They forget the fact that Darwin had nothing to do with the ideas and actions of people like Galton and Davenport. But they keep trying to sell the myth, and many people buy into it.
It would be nice if some people could realize that you can't blame science as a whole for what some people attempt to do with it.
My issues with Evolutionary Psychology stem from the fact that they often seem to jump to conclusions without having much to back them up.
ReplyDeleteThat summarizes my problem with it quite well, too.
I was going to leave a comment along those lines, but I see it's already been covered :D I'd only add the caveat that that problem is only a tendency within evolutionary psychology... I feel that Steven Pinker, for example, is less prone to wild speculation -- or at least he qualifies it when he is speculating -- and does a better job at distancing himself from genetic determinism. (FWIW, I think that neither sociobiology nor the evolutionary psychology promotes genetic determinism per se, I just think its advocates are not always sufficiently guarded in their language to avoid being misunderstood as promoting genetic determinism)
ReplyDeleteBut the article... WOW. That has virtually nothing to do with evolutionary psychology.
Make sure you read the scathing comments below the article, too.
ReplyDelete"Make sure you read the scathing comments below the article, too."
ReplyDeleteHeh, so I started to, and then I was going to come back here and mention that I thought the second commenter summed it up even better when he said that "some of EP assumes that everything they deal with is an adaptation" -- but then I realized that would be superfluous, huh?
In response to the rest of your comment there, if I recall correctly I seem to remember there is rather good evidence that the Western female preference for pink is indeed a conditioned response rather than an innate one. For instance, IIRC, pink was considered a manly color in late-19th century America. Not that that is particularly strong evidence in itself, but it makes the idea of it being an innate trait much harder to accept.
Not that that matters, since there are many other areas where innate gender differences in tendencies(*) seem much more likely given the current evidence.
(*) Sorry for that awkward turn of phrase, but given articles like Silberman's, it seems necessary to always make the caveat that even if these differences prove to be real and innate, they are still only tendencies, not absolutes...
For one thing, hormones are inherently different in men and women, and hormones have a demonstratively huge effect on human behavior.
ReplyDeleteOther examples?
James,
ReplyDelete"FWIW, I think that neither sociobiology nor the evolutionary psychology promotes genetic determinism per se, I just think its advocates are not always sufficiently guarded in their language to avoid being misunderstood as promoting genetic determinism"
That's a well stated point.