Category: Evolutionary psychology
Richard Weikart: Why social science does not need evolutionary theory
| June 19, 2018 | Posted by News under Culture, Evolutionary psychology, Intelligent Design |
From Richard Weikart at ENST|: In an article for Nautilus, Cristine Legare explains “Why Social Science Needs Evolutionary Theory.” An associate professor of psychology at the University of Texas, Austin, she laments that the social sciences are missing out, because they ignore the findings of evolutionary theory. She states, “The lack of willingness to view […]
At Nautilus: Psychology needs evolutionary psychology
| June 16, 2018 | Posted by News under Evolution, Evolutionary psychology, Intelligent Design, Mind |
As if psychology were not troubled enough. Psychologist Cristine Legare argues at Nautilus: My high school biology teacher, Mr. Whittington, put a framed picture of a primate ancestor in the front of his classroom—a place of reverence. In a deeply religious and conservative community in rural America, this was a radical act. Evolution, among the […]
Call for papers: How did atheism evolve? Evolutionary psychologists now want to study atheism
| June 10, 2018 | Posted by News under Atheism, Culture, Evolutionary psychology, Intelligent Design |
Is it due to natural selection acting on random mutations (Darwinian evolution)? Is it adaptive? A byproduct? A stop on the road to extinction? Papers wanted here: — Evolutionary perspectives on atheism/unbelief Despite increasing secularization and a decreasing role played by institutionalized religions in the western world, many scholars within the study of religion – […]
Larry Moran asks whether evolutionary psychology is a “deeply flawed” enterprise
| March 16, 2018 | Posted by News under Evolutionary psychology, Human evolution, Intelligent Design |
Longtime University of Toronto biochemistry professor and frequent Uncommon Descent commenter Larry Moran: We were discussing the field of evolutionary psychology at our local cafe scientific meeting last week. The discussion was prompted by watching a video of Steven Pinker in conversation with Stephen Fry. I pointed out that the field of evolutionary psychology is […]
Evolutionary psychology puts people with disabilities in their place. Not a nice place.
| January 20, 2018 | Posted by News under Darwinism, Evolutionary psychology, Intelligent Design, Naturalism |
From Elsa Sjunneson-Henry, who struggls with a disability, reviewing a sci-fi film at Tor: I Belong Where the People Are: Disability and The Shape of Water On the surface, there are many things to like about The Shape of Water. The main characters, the ones in the right, they are all outsiders. They are people […]
From the Edge: Another reason not to like evolutionary psychology – support for Chinese eugenics
| December 11, 2017 | Posted by News under Culture, Evolutionary psychology, Intelligent Design, Mind |
A friend unearthed this: From evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey Miller of NYU at the Edge (a response to their 2013 question): 2013 : What *Should* We Be Worried About? China has been running the world’s largest and most successful eugenics program for more than thirty years, driving China’s ever-faster rise as the global superpower. I worry […]
Romantic love “evolved” to prevent infanticide? Can someone please pull the chain on evolutionary psychology?
| November 24, 2017 | Posted by News under Darwinism, Evolutionary psychology, Intelligent Design |
From Phoebe Weston at the Daily Mail: Falling in love is one of life’s great mysteries, but now scientists believe this strange feeling could be key to our evolutionary success. For the first time researchers have found evidence ‘selection promoted love in human evolution’ as it increased the chances of us having families. Scientists studied the […]
Evolutionary psychology’s greatest contribution to research is as a line item expense
| November 17, 2017 | Posted by News under Evolutionary psychology, Intelligent Design |
Here is an example: A friend asked, why do so many pop science articles on the widespread problem of loneliness begin with some jaw about at how loneliness evolved. This item at The Atlantic gives a sense of it: As social animals, we depend on others for survival. Our communities provide mutual aid and protection, […]
The end of promissory materialism? What advances has materialism (naturalism) made in the last decade?
| November 12, 2017 | Posted by News under Animal minds, Artificial Intelligence, Culture, Evolutionary psychology, Intelligent Design, Naturalism |
Here is a piece I (O’Leary for News) wrote for the first edition of Salvo (2006). Interesting to see how it has held up after more than a decade has past. – 0 – About three years ago, I predicted that the intelligent design controversy would explode in a few years, with every instapundit punding […]
The “Grand Challenge” for evolutionary psychology is that it is bunk
| October 6, 2017 | Posted by News under Evolutionary psychology, Human evolution, Naturalism |
Identifying the “Grand Challenge” in a Specialty Grand Challenge Article, Peter K. Jonason, School of Social Sciences and Psychology, Western Sydney University, explains: If one assumes, like evolutionary psychologists do, that psychological systems are biological and physical (i.e., no ethereal concept of mind) in nature, evolutionary models must apply to the brain and its sequalae. […]
Google: Should science be equated with truth?
| August 14, 2017 | Posted by News under Biology, Culture, Darwinism, Evolutionary psychology, Human evolution, Intellectual freedom, Intelligent Design |
From Heather Heying, weighing in on the Google foray into post-modern truth, which smacked an unwary engineer upside head, at Quillette: Should We “Stop Equating ‘Science’ With Truth”? Damore’s heresy turns on innate differences between men and women that have never been noticed by anyone in the history of human life on the planet except […]
Diversity: Maybe Google’s worst fears will come true – Updated 2 wow 2
| August 10, 2017 | Posted by News under Culture, Evolutionary psychology, Intellectual freedom, Intelligent Design |
Lots of people are now saying that the king is a fink*. A friend kindly offers some useful update links on the subject: Neuroscientist Debra Soh defends Damore. No surprise, she is also not a fan of the marchin’, marchin’ pussyhats for science and has warned about the danger of fad post-modern concepts like intersectionality […]
A note on that fired Google engineer (a biology major)…
| August 9, 2017 | Posted by News under Culture, Evolutionary psychology, Intellectual freedom, Intelligent Design, Naturalism |
The one who got drowned in diversicrat social media politics. The story provides good illustration of the way in which traditional media today are not up to the job of newsgathering in a non-gatekeeper digital age and should not be trusted. From Bre Davis at the Federalist: Here Are All The Media Outlets Blatantly Lying […]
Fired Google engineer got his ideas from… evolutionary psychology
| August 8, 2017 | Posted by News under Culture, Evolutionary psychology, Intelligent Design, Naturalism |
In a coherent system, that would be a dilemma. As progressives turn and rend each other with increasing ferocity—as a break from attacking others— we learn that the engineer who was fired from Google for authoring the anti-diversity memo was relying on the principles of evolutionary psychology. From Nitasha Tiku at Wired: The 10-page missive […]
Evolutionary medicine: Insomnia in the elderly is due to evolution?
| July 12, 2017 | Posted by News under Evolutionary psychology, Human evolution, Intelligent Design |
From ScienceDaily: They call their theory the “poorly sleeping grandparent hypothesis.” The basic idea is that, for much of human history, living and sleeping in mixed-age groups of people with different sleep habits helped our ancestors keep a watchful eye and make it through the night. “Any time you have a mixed-age group population, some […]
Are there “war genes”?
| July 8, 2017 | Posted by News under Evolutionary psychology, Genetics, Human evolution |
A comparatively sensible article from at the Genetic Literacy Project: Systemic rape used to go hand in hand with war as women, resources and lands were assimilated into the victors’ communities. The victorious men had more children, more land and more power. Some researchers have argued that this is proof of the ‘deep roots theory […]
Well known psych study cannot be replicated
| June 15, 2017 | Posted by News under Evolutionary psychology, Intelligent Design, Mind |
But by now, so what? Apart from political issues (gaining power by manipulating fake science claims), all this stuff would be so long discredited that it would only survive as a branch of the “Cultural Studies Department.” Anyway,t his stuff: Over 30 years ago, Leonard Martin, Sabine Stepper, and I (Strack et al., 1988) conducted […]
Relax after work with the Drunken Monkey Hypothesis
| March 30, 2017 | Posted by News under Evolutionary psychology, Human evolution, Intelligent Design, News |
From Nick Hines at VinePair, on why we like to drink alcohol: The theory was originally put forth by Robert Dudley, a professor of integrative biology at the University of California, Berkeley, in a 2000 article called “Evolutionary origins of human alcoholism in primate frugivory.” The hypothesis proposes that apes and early humans evolved to […]
Yes, the new science of morality can ground moralities in science—all of them, in fact
| February 19, 2017 | Posted by News under Evolutionary psychology, Intelligent Design, Mind, Naturalism, News |
Further to Barry Arrington: Can science ground morality?, looking at James Davison Hunter’s and Paul Nedelisky’s Where the New Science of Morality Goes Wrong: Indeed, some believe that we are at the start of a new age, when the power of science will dispel myths surrounding morality and moral difference and establish a truly rational […]
Darwin’s wastebasket: The evolutionary purpose of suicidal behaviour
| February 11, 2017 | Posted by News under Culture, Darwinism, Evolutionary psychology, Intelligent Design |
From Matthew Hutson at Nautilus: The second strategic model of suicidality is the bargaining model, which relies on the notion of “costly signaling.”6 A colorful example of costly signaling is the peacock. Managing a big, eye-catching tail is costly, in that it wastes energy and draws predators. But the fitter a peacock, the less costly […]
