Is it fair to judge scientific theories by their offspring? For the greatest theory ever conceived, Darwinian evolution has begotten an idiot in evolutionary psychology. Here’s Fred Reed on the topic: I find in Psychology Today a piece called “Ten Politically Incorrect Truths about Human Nature,” explaining various aspects of behavior in Darwinian terms. The smugness of that “politically incorrect” is characteristic of those who want a sense of adventure without risk. Nothing is more PC than an evolutionary explanation, unless it explains obvious racial differences that we aren’t supposed to talk about. OK, the authors are going to explain why we mate as we do. “Blue-eyed people,” they write, “are considered attractive as potential mates because it is easiest Read More ›

Responding to something I wrote at the Post-Darwinist about the popularity of evolutionary psychology among atheists, Moran (a textbook co-author you may well have suffered through in school), responds:

Just for the record, Denyse, I’m one of those evil atheists that you like to rant about but I’m totally opposed to evolutionary psychology.

But you already knew that many evolutionary biologist were against evolutionary psychology, didn’t you?

No, I didn’t, Larry, and if that’s true, it’s high time more of them voiced their objections. The only sustained critiques I have seen are Hilary and Steven Rose’s unjustly neglected Alas, Poor Darwin and David Buller’s also unjustly neglected Adapting Minds. Steven Rose is a neurobiologist, but Hilary Rose is a social scientist, and David J. Buller a philosopher. 

No doubt, there are many critiques out there that I haven’t seen, but I wonder what proportion comes from evolutionary biologists, as opposed to social scientists who know the difference between research and speculation. Read More ›

Recently, someone from Europe (who says he is “very sceptical of intelligent design theory”) drew my attention to a “horrible” article he found in the Google cache.* Read More ›

In this video, a rabbit somewhere in Texas chases a big snake up a tree.

Recently, a house cat also chased a bear up a tree. (You have to scroll way way down to see a vigilant ginger cat at the bottom of the tree.)

One of the many reasons I have little use for evo psycho is that animal behavior is often not at all predictable. It may be difficult to say what behavior enabled a given animal to become an ancestor, and therefore what may be encoded in genes. And genuine common ancestors may be rare. Read More ›

I have been meaning for some time to set down my reasons for thinking that evolutionary psychology is only questionably a discipline. At least seven reasons occur to me (actually more, but these seven are top of mind):

Read More ›

It’s amazing what passes for science these days (as well as what doesn’t): The first evidence that beauty is infectious is published today by scientists who have shown that when women see a rival smiling at a man, he becomes more attractive as a result. . . . Why has nature designed women to be so in thrall to the opinion of others? Selecting a mate and raising children is what life is all about, according to the cold eyed view of evolutionary biologists. As a result, it pays to get as much information on a man as possible, including what other women think of him. “Using information from others can only improve your decision about a mate,” said Dr Read More ›

Denyse just alerted me to this latest gem of wisdom in the evolutionary psychology arena, concerning the origin of musical ability and appreciation: http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2006/09/03/survival_of_the_harmonious The one thing that always amazes me is that Darwinists concentrate on the survival value of a certain trait (why natural selection would select that trait), while assuming that the trait can be had on the cheap and for the asking. Do any of them ever ask, What random mutations would it take to genetically rewire a non-musical brain so that it could appreciate and create music, and what are the probabilities that these mutations could have arisen by chance and been fixed in the population in the time available, with the number of generations available Read More ›

Bill’s recent exchange with an American sci jo who has suddenly discovered (how, I wonder?) that Darwinists’ promotion of evangelical atheism is a poor match for their claims of religious neutrality made me decide to cross-post an item from the Post-Darwinist. I keep up with the steady stream of nonsense from evolutionary psychology, because that is the form of Darwinism that most laypeople encounter most regularly. Stories like the one from the Dallas Morning News, linked below, help us understand why so many Americans cannot take Darwinism seriously. It drips with the vast contempt that the Darwinist feels for people who have had experiences he (or she) cannot account for, let alone (apparently) have. (I don’t take too seriously the Read More ›

Here’s your second chance to make this thread productive. Stay on topic. Janiebelle has been booted. NEW RULE AT UD: No more bold insertions into existing comments. I’ve done it as has DaveScot. That’s now a thing of the past. One-comment-one-poster is now the rule.

Brilliant men always betray their wives
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2006/07/13/baaffairs13.xml

Einstein’s affairs should surprise no one, says Desmond Morris. It is all in the genius’s genes

So Albert Einstein did not, after all, spend all his waking hours chalking up complex symbols on a blackboard. According to letters newly released this week, he devoted quite a bit of it to chasing the ladies. And with considerable success.

To many, the idea of Einstein having 10 mistresses does not fit the classical image of the great, remote genius. Why was he wasting his valuable time with the exhausting business of conducting a string of illicit affairs – affairs that would cause havoc with his family life, damaging especially his relationship with his sons?

The answer is that he, like many other intensely creative men, was over-endowed with one of the human male’s most characteristic qualities: the joy of risk-taking.

Every creative act, every new formula, every ground-breaking innovation, is an act of rebellion that may – if successful – destroy an old, existing concept. So every time a brilliant mind sees a new possibility, it is faced with a moment of supreme risk-taking.

The new formula, the new invention, may not work. It may turn out to be a disaster. But the man of genius – such as Einstein – has the courage to plough ahead, despite the dangers, both on and off the intellectual field.

Not that Einstein is by any means an isolated instance. Indeed, far from being the exception he is closer to the norm where great men and sex are concerned. Read More ›

At the Evolution Institute, UNC Charlotte biological anthropologist Jonathan Marks, who blogs on the cultural significance of Darwinism at Anthropomics, writes, ”Evolutionary Psychology Is Neither”: … It’s presumably better than creationist psychology, but nobody practices creationist psychology – so presumably the word “evolutionary” is doing a bit more work here than it may seem at first blush. Indeed, the word seems to encode, in this context, a series of propositions that most people actually working in human evolution believe to be false, if not ridiculous. Foundationally, where students of human evolution have generally emphasized the adaptability of the human mind, evolutionary psychologists have rather attempted to call attention to the adaptedness of the human mind. From these opposed starting points, Read More ›

Before the Evolutionary Agony Aunt, Darwinian Brand Marketing, and thousands of dim frosh learning the “real” reasons people pray or why we don’t throw granny under the bus?

Think back. Think waaay back (if you can) to Wilhelm Reich, once the science darling of the Establishment, with a single, simple idea that governed everything:

The spiritual hysteria that Reich inspired in the America of the 1940s and early ’50s is as hard to explain now as the madness that 1920s crowds felt hearing Bix Beiderbecke play the cornet, especially when you consider that most Reichians were supposed to be educated skeptics and cultural critics. Even—or especially—intellectuals are not immune to America’s chronic and recurring religious revivals in their various forms.Saul Bellow, Norman Mailer, Dwight Macdonald, J.D. Salinger, Paul Goodman, William Burroughs and other bohemian culture heroes were among his followers: examples of what Lionel Trilling unsettlingly called “the moral urgency, the sense of crisis and the concern with personal salvation that mark the existence of American intellectuals.” Reich won a particular following among intellectuals, artists and cultural spokesmen who were looking for a new revo
ution after becoming disillusioned with communism.

– Henry Allen, “Thinking Inside the Box: Why some of America’s most prominent minds fell for the wildly eccentric ideas of Wilhelm Reich,”The Wall Street Journal, June 11, 2011

Reich was the prophet of the “apocalyptic orgasm.” No, really. And did any big brain get suspicious on account of his Read More ›