Close your eyes, Luke, listen to the Force

• Phenomenological Science? by John Fentress, 3/24/98
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    • Time to Speak! by Doug William, 4/3/98
      
      

This is timely ... I'm putting together a casual talk on "Fabre's Tactics of Scientific Research" for an ASCAP conference this July. I won't have time to mention the following but want to do so here. Thanks for the opportunity.

1) Kant appears to have carried the day over Locke. Even to the extent that our psych adaptations heavily influence what we accept as "true." See the discussions in "The Adapted Mind." Note the papers by Profet (on morning sickness) and Fernald (on maternal vocalizations) and Cosmides/Tooby on cheater detectors.

2) Wilson has made "consilience" a recognized term, recognized in the sense of reflecting agreement between varied disciplines. John Pearce assures me that the natural science group has used it for a long time - since Whewell sired it in 1840? - and the rest of us are about to learn the word. I would like to think that I at least tied Wilson with "H&G minds build H&G cultures" but I refuse to appear disrespectful of one of my heroes.

3. I marvel how we cling to Platonism. We draw graphs to reflect functional relations while ignoring variability. Evolutionary Psych (and my obsession, clinical sociobiology) should attribute not individual variability to "error." There is a rich possibility of competing, alternative strategies for solving nearly any survival problem. Yet, there is an affirmed Universality of Psych Adaptations (Plato dates political correctness? Oops, being rude again.). See the chapter by Michael Bailey in C&K, "Handbook of EP" for a reasoned, alternative position. Searching for universals and simplifications has been highly productive in most sciences. The devious gift from RA Fisher, of discounting error and looking for differences in group means, has some limits, particularly within EP. We need some math gadgets for asserting degree of similarity and identity ... gadgets in addition to our psych adaptations that often make such classifications rather easily as we go about daily living.

4. EP will continue to be haunted by "just so stories." One reason is that "goal directedness" is a convenient way to organize behavior routines into clusters. Some of the cause relates to our inherently retrospective discipline ... we may not be able or willing to play the tape again while assigning folks randomly to this or that nature or nurture.

5. John Pearce has made the point that EP sometimes gains credibility by offering predictions that conflict with current explanations and theories. Predictions that are verified by further observation. (There are likely examples in "The Adapted Mind.")

5. Most of your practice, as does mine, relies more on your psych adaptations than on things you learned in grad school. No matter what courses you took, your clinical success and your ability to continue to enjoy such work, likely depends on your adaptations for succorance, empathy, and ability to form alliances with people who often have difficulty handling alliances. Such "proof" can be more convincing than articles in the Psych Review. Pity yourself if you practice love or psychology from a book.

6. To the extent that you are still annoyed by our flirtatious relationship with Normal Science, you perhaps should:

a.) Get sweaty transplanting trees or moving field stone.

b.) Rear some ducklings and watch them solve the same tasks that you do but without benefit/handicap (sic) of feet and hands.

c.) Raise some children to adulthood. Watch them act like you or your parents despite your best efforts for a different outcome.

d.) Stroll the fields at midnight under a clear sky. Take along your favorite cat and watch how he paces himself 8 feet behind and to one side of you, your ally in a hunt even though your lines split very long ago.

e.) Go for a morning run while keeping a watch for red tailed hawks policing the fields.

f.) Notice the waves of children coming after you in time. Contrast their energy level with your own failing pace.

g.) Finally, read Loren Eiseley; read him again over the next 3 decades. When you're about to wear blankets and feathers, switch into Darwin, Haldane, Margulis, Wilson, or de Waal.

I've admitted above in other essays that evolution can be something of a religion. However, it's a religion that generates different recommendations from other religions; recommendations we must heed if our children and their children are not to starve or wither from disease. A big-eyed, pot-bellied infant, human or avian, looks so appealing even as they die.

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