Some of us don’t buy the whole “denial” thing altogether. As our kairosfocus says, “De Nile is a river in Egypt.”
And as News says, No one has an obligation to believe stuff that doesn’t make sense just because 99% of the people who make a living fronting it insist that it is true.
The world is crazy, but not that crazy, not so far.
But for those who are interested in the brand, here’s Chris Mooney making clear that unwillingness to sign on to evolutionary psychology is liberal science denial:
There’s no doubt that many left leaning academics have historically been quite skeptical about evolutionary psychology, presumably out of the fear that ascribing certain traits to biology suggests that they cannot be changed — and thus, can perpetuate inequality. The famed Harvard cognitive scientist Steven Pinker extensively challenged their “blank slate” view in a bestselling 2002 book. Going back further, in the storied “sociobiology” wars of the 1970s, evolutionary thinkers like Harvard’s E.O. Wilson sought to apply their understanding of humankind’s origins to modern human behavior — and fell into a ferocious row with broadly left-leaning scholars who attacked biological or genetic “determinism,” and defended the idea that social factors explain most of what we need to know about why people do what they do.
We don’t care if we never hear from “left-leaning scholars” around here, as days of rage are just so not our thing.
But can we not summon an ounce at least of pity for people whose failure to sign on to the most ridiculous outcropping of Darwinism—evolutionary psychology—brings about their downfall? See, for example, “The evolutionary psychologist knows why you vote — and shop, and tip at restaurants”:
A number of voices of reason have been heard over the years. The best-known dissent is not religious, incidentally. Common-sense philosophers David Stove and Jerry Fodor have written books, respectively Darwinian Fairytales and What Darwin Got Wrong, assailing evo psych’s simplistic, counterintuitive assertions. Social scientists such as Steven and Hilary Rose, editors of the anthology Alas, Poor Darwin, weigh in on its ad hoc assumptions about human behavior. Journalist Sharon Begley (Newsweek 2009) notes the evolutionary psychologists’ characteristic backpedalling when challenged on extreme claims, and their comfort with undemonstrable hypotheses: …
Look, it wasn’t us that abolished common sense.
The last time we heard about liberals (today they are progressives with a PR firm really, not in any meaningful sense liberals), they were being attacked as liberal creationists. Some of us have never figured out exactly what provoked that slaughter in the ranks; seems like Ash Jogalekar got hit though.
Just as long as the Liberators are not coming here soon. But if they do, just so they know … de Nile is a river in Egypt.
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