EP Controversies

EP Controversies: Public and Private

1) Mismatch: our old bodies have not kept up with our new toys. Rebut: we make our toys to suit our nature and there is less "mismatch" now in western cultures than at any other point in human history.

2) Religion and EP: Endorsed by major religions but not taught in public school. Academic left and religious fundamentalists united! Neither care for evolution.

3) Feminism, Standard Social Science Model (current environment causes human differences). Rebut: Repeated external challenges led our genes to "remember" and to change. External became an internal human nature.)

4) Seeks universals in human behavior, individual variation is attributed to pathogens and developmental trauma. (Pathogens of interest whenever one of them kills a lot of us. For example, the Black Plague killed 33% of Europe in 3 years but may have left behind people who were resistant not only to the Plague but also to HIV.)( Zimmer, 2002) Biologists challenge: Universal Human Nature exists even thought we don't have a Universal Human Hemoglobin?

5) Race and I.Q.: The most divisive issue of our time although it need not be...It also prevents looking for other systematic differences aside from medical impairments.

6) Disputes between common sense and EP: Blank Slate (we are not), Ghost in the Machine (there is none), and Dryden/Rousseau's the Noble Savage (no such thing...Margaret Mead looked). Pinker's observations remind me of one by Howard Gardner: "Natural learners" know by age 6 that up is up and down is down and can disassemble a bicycle brake. They also know that the earth is flat. We immerse them in 12 years of lectures and after graduation, they, even engineering students, revert back to their age-6 beliefs. I think that Steve is fighting an adaptation or the failure of any selective pressure against these beliefs.

7) Ignores behavior genetics although using "genes" as a hypothetical construct. Sometimes hostile to evolutionary developmental biology (evo-devo).

8) Historical nature: infer independent variables from dependent ones. Not a scientific explanation. EP is a theory comprised of intervening variables and hypotheses: "If X were true once upon a time, we should expect, Y." Hypothesis formation inspired and channeled by comparisons across species. There must be common incentives in terms of genetic advantage for those similarities. Predict: clutch size as a function of resources, defeated males will have mates who fool around more, poor males have fickle mates, etc. Some surprises: homely male birds who have large territories attract more partners than colorful ones with small territories. Other surprises: flowers assumed to be an attractor for bees and pollination. Modify the flowers, however, and the same birds and bees show up to do their job. New thinking: flowers' shape is due to resisting ants and colors are a byproduct of sour taste. Birds and bees drawn by ultraviolet?

9) The role of "stories": BE SUSPICIOUS whenever you hear "because" or "in order to," For example, flowers were thought to attract bees and birds and specialized themselves for a particular pollen carrier. We understand now that flower structure defends against insects and color is due to the presence of toxins that protect the flower. (Birds commonly vector on UV, which we rarely see). "Stories" are easy to make in regard to psychological adaptations because operational definitions are rare. PAs are often an intervening variable, one that helps psychologists organize their research.

10) Malthus: Darwin decided fairly late that he needed Malthus: competition for food drove natural selection by starvation of the less fit. Starvation matters and certainly culls the generations but there are other limits that preempt starvation. Mothers produce fewer offspring, especially males, during hardship and mothers, including mine and yours, sometimes kill defective offspring, abandon them, or do not resist when a strange male (in many species) or another, more dominant female (wolves and chimps), kills them.
Notes & Refs:

Zimmer (2002)
Pinker, S. (2002) The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature. NY: Viking.

Copyright 2002, all rights reserved, James Brody

Replies:

Evo-Devo & EP, by James Brody, 03/12/04 Hox Genes & Mall Chicks, by James Brody, 06/03/04

| Behavior OnLine Home Page | Disclaimer |

Copyright © 1996-2004 Behavior OnLine, Inc. All rights reserved.