Bouchard on Standard Social Science and on Variation

Dr. Bouchard shared the following reference:

Bouchard, T. J., Lykken, D., Telegen, A., & McGue, M. (1996) Genes, Drives, Environment, and Experience. Chapter 1 in C.P. Benbow & D. Lubinski (eds.) Intellectual Talent: Psychometric and Social Issues. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, pp 5-43.

It's worth your attention. For example:

A trumpet blast:

"Many psychologists, however, become upset, if not apoplectic, when evolutionary and genetic facts are proposed as part of the framework necessary to understand human behavior and development. (See Gottleib, 1991; Oyama 1985, 1988; for the contrary position, see Barkow, Cosmides, & Tooby, 1992; Charlesworth, 1992; Plomin, 1988; Wright, 1994). We believe, however, that a framework informed by quantitative genetics and evolutionary theory is both highly appropriate and extremely useful. It allows for a quantitative description of some significant facts, it is consistent with standard practice in a variety of scientific disciplines, it incorporates our understandings that human beings are biological organisms whose functional and developmental mechanisms operate under the same biological constraints as do other organisms, and it provides a solid frame of reference for reexamining the validity of the implicit and often deliberately unstated argument that human beings are somehow a unique species that has evolved beyond ordinary forms of scientific understanding. This view permeates many segments of psychology and is redolent with the kind of mysticism that the scientific mind has had to battle for centuries. The fact is, human beings are, in the words of Foley (1987), just another "unique species." Any attempt fully to understand this species apart from its biological and evolutionary heritage is, in our opinion, doomed to failure." (p. 6)

A bit of Active Darwinism:

"If evolution did not leave us at the easy mercy of variations in the environment, then what did it do? It did the same thing it did with all other biological organisms: It provided us, through natural selection, with built-in mechanisms for exploiting our environment for our own benefit." (p. 31)

1) In regard to:

"To expand our plausible conjecture, genes drive behavior (emph added) and that behavior determines the environments that we experience. It will also be necessary to distinguish in our models and in our experiments between the objective or consensually defined environment and the subjective environment, (i.e., the environment as the subject actually construes and experiences it.) Given the same objective environment, the genes can bias the subjective environments of different individuals, and the behaviors they call forth, in crucially diverging directions (Tellegen, 1991)." p. 27.

Jean Marie Lehn applies:

"(Dynamic combinatorial chemistry) rests on the dynamic generation of molecular and supramolecular diversity through the reversible connection of covalently or noncovalently linked building blocks, which gives access to the full set of all combinations that may potentially exist. Addition of a receptor displaces the dynamic equilibrium toward the preferential formation of the best-binding constituent, in a target-driven selection of the fittest. (emph added) (Lehn, 2002).

Lehn, JM (2002) Toward self organization and complex matter. Science, 295, 2400-2407, and the related set of papers in that issue.

I like the idea of receptors coming first and behavior developing around them. It seems to me that "behavior" extends the range of opportunities that might be sampled. One might find it plausible that receptors define an organization. Selective advantages then accrue to partnerships between that organization and any other organization or circumstance that increases the passing opportunties. A chemical structure (organism) next goes hunting, no longer sitting and waiting for whatever floats past in the simmering broth. And MZA (monozygotic twins reared apart) will go hunting for that can of Bud rather than accidentally encountering bartenders who happen to give them the same lecture.

2) Science, 4/12/02, (vol 296, pp 297-316) has a section on self-recognition that pivots around receptors. It might provide a different approach to explanations of cooperation between MZ. It might also catalyze a view that we "recognize" parts of "self" when we travel through "environments." Gotta be a little careful...prenatal imprinting could also underlie similarities in the choices made by individuals from the same parents...wow, tunable receptors!

3) Differences between people in their psychological adaptations: I like very much Bouchard's discussion on variation and why it doesn't easily go away. (In 90 generations of maize selected for high and low oil content, the average levels changed systematically and almost dramatically but the variation within any one generation did not.)

I suggest that forming alliances, schools, and flocks, is one way to handle variation in traits that might be considered as essential. Not all of us, for example, are particulary good at managing wives or little children but partnerships with people around us often compensate for the deficits found in any one participant. Even people with terrible skills for managing alliances (schizophrenics) are adopted and managed by the rest of the group. The social net is more resilient than any one participant. Stu Kauffman and other people have some things to say about this...

JimB

Copyright, James Brody, 2002, all rights reserved

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