Nice series of short take-downs of Evolutionary Psychology from the "women of Slate magazine". Meghan O'Rourke puts her finger on it when she says:
The trouble with evolutionary psychology is that there are no (or few) ways of testing its theorems. With enough ingenuity on the part of the researcher, nearly any finding about gender can be twisted to suit the evolutionary lens.
Incidentally, here's a new bit of research that puts paid to the notion of women as the more talkative sex. A good portion of the evo psych edifice is starting to look bit crumbly.
My title, by the way, refers to this.
Are you suggesting that somebody actually wasted money in order to 'learn' that women are the more talkative sex?
ReplyDeleteIf you're going to try and discredit evolutionary psychology, you're going to have to do a lot better than citing those nags at Slate. Progressives reject evolutionary psychology for the same reason religious fanatics reject evolution - because it threatens their most cherished beliefs about the world.
ReplyDeleteWhen evo psych first burst on the scene in 1975 with E. O. Wilson's book Sociobiology, Wilson was branded a Nazi and targeted with hate propaganda for years afterward. Students rioted when he was scheduled to speak at universities. Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene was welcomed with much the same response the following year. Sociobiologists were the target of so much hate they actually changed the name of their field of study to 'Evolutionary Psychology' in an effort to shed some of the baggage wrongly attached to the earlier name.
And 30 years on, what do we have? An increasing body of evidence, built upon the foundation provided by those early Sociobologists, that offers a legitimate scientific explanation for so much human behaviour that it can no longer be ignored. The old tabula rasa (blank slate) assumption that was a founding principle of modern social sciences has been shown to be a crock. Anyone versed in even the basics of sociobiology could deflate the arguments in Slate.
Think of it for a moment. Either evolution is legitimate or it isn't. If it is, then how is it possible that it affects, no, dominates the behaviour of every other species on Earth, while leaving human beings untouched? Progressives are every bit as obstinate as religious fundamentalists when they reject out of hand what evolutionary theory, including evolutionary psychology, can teach us. Evo psychs aren't right about everything. But they offer a far more plausible theory of human nature and human behaviour than anything the social sciences have come up with.
RR wrote:
ReplyDelete"And 30 years on, what do we have? An increasing body of evidence, built upon the foundation provided by those early Sociobologists, that offers a legitimate scientific explanation for so much human behaviour that it can no longer be ignored."
It's the "legitimate, scientific" part that is in question. As the ladies suggest, the standard of evidence for evolutionary psychology is about the same level as that of psychology generally, which is very low. As for the "so much" part, Marxism had an explanation for great swathes of human behavior. Loads of crappy explanations are no better than one.
RR:
"Think of it for a moment. Either evolution is legitimate or it isn't. If it is, then how is it possible that it affects, no, dominates the behaviour of every other species on Earth, while leaving human beings untouched?"
Selection pressures are just one reason why animals are the way they are and do what they do. And even in the hard evolutionary sciences, it is often difficult to determine why a particular character developed, or how an animal behaved on the basis of its physical characteristics. In evo psych, again, the standard of evidence is so low that alternative explanations are always easily at hand. The ladies give concrete examples. If you think they are wrong, refute 'em in the specifics.
RR:
"Progressives are every bit as obstinate as religious fundamentalists when they reject out of hand what evolutionary theory, including evolutionary psychology, can teach us. Evo psychs aren't right about everything. But they offer a far more plausible theory of human nature and human behaviour than anything the social sciences have come up with."
They ARE a social science.
They are the black sheep of the social sciences that's for sure. But it is not a social science. Rather, it is a theoretical framework that can be applied to all kinds of fields. Evolutionary psychologists lurk in almost every department imaginable. Psychology, zoology, linguistics, human biology, psychiatry faculties in med schools, political science....even in economics.
ReplyDeleteNot surprisingly, they have really infested the anthropology departments. At some universities, the anthro departments have been cleaved in two, Cultural Anthropology and Evolutionary Anthropology. (Needless to say, the hatred between these two fields is legendary, with entire books being written with the aim of smearing and discrediting notable researchers on the renegade evolutionary side.)
It is true that much of EP has become as frivolous and fanciful as pop psychology and pop science in general. Notable Canadian linguist (and committed evolutionary psychologist) Dr. Stephen Pinker has been critical of his peers' tendency to attribute almost every human quirk to some evolutionary pressure in our knuckle-dragging past. And even some of Pinker's more radical assumptions seem extreme and absolutist and lacking in evidence.
But, the field moves ahead. And contrary to the assertions by the ladies of Slate, there has been plenty of rigourous, scientifically robust research going on in this since before sociobiology even had a name.
If you're interested in reading about the battle over evolutionary psychology that has riven anthropologists into warring camps, read this article here.
http://tinyurl.com/2bgn7u
It also shows the extremes to which the field's detractors are willing to go in an attempt to disparage and discredit.