I disagree with Mr. Buck who is not a scientist but I like
his spirit. (his brief article is below) He is a socialist
and of course if one does subscribe to biological
determinism then the idea of socialism is shattered. But its
interesting to note there appears to be two camps among
followers of biological determinism. The first camp sees
nothing wrong with biological determinism. It's a part of
our Darwinian nature and should be fully expressed rather
than attempted to be thwarted or suppressed. The second
camp, among which I include myself, acknowledges biological
determinism but don't think it should be fully expressed but
don't believe ultimately it can be thwarted. This camp seems
to be in the minority. There is a third camp which takes the
middle road which neither believes our Darwinian nature
should be fully expressed but that it can be sufficiently
controlled. This is probably the majority camp.
That is why I advocate genetic engineering of people.
Because I do agree generally with people like Pinker. I
think if Darwinian evolution is permitted to continue it
will result in our destruction as a species. Aggression is
a salient component of Darwinian evolution. Will anybody
seriously question that. Can anybody seriously question the
continuation of extreme violence around the world which is
not primarily culturally fueled but a part of our biology.
I realize some would take issue with this and state such
violence was primarily culturally fueled but I don't
believe that.
I'd welcome a response from the likes of Wilkins, Atmar,
Moran, Felsenstein, Dr. Hayes, etc. whether they consider
the continuation of Darwinian evolution (assuming there is
no genetic intervention) to ultimately lead to the
destruction of our species. I know nobody has a direct
crystal ball to the future but I'm requesting a projection
based on our evolutionary history up to the present and
projecting into the future. Based on what Wilkins has
recently stated regarding NS it would certainly seem that is
a possibility. But I'm hopefully looking for more than just
a possibility. I guess I'm asking for your personal opinion
as opposed to your scientific expertise. The may not be
warranted in this group but I'd sure be curious.
I'm also curious where you all fall on the biological
determinism debate. My "guess" is most of you are neither
hardliners or the opposite where there is no aspect of our
biology which isn't somewhat biologically determined. The
question is how determined and under what circumstances it
can internationally violently flare up.
I think I might hear the echoes of the Grand Canyon.
Michael Ragland
Evolutionary pseudo-psychology
Is competition, leadership, aggression, possessiveness, and
social and
biologically-determined human nature?
Socialists have seen it all before. First it was the Social
Darwinists, then it was the Nazis, then in the 1960s books
appeared with such titles as The Territorial Imperative, On
Aggression and The Naked Ape, then there was sociobiology,
now there's "evolutionary psychology". All put over the same
basic message: competition, leadership, aggression,
never have a society without them as they're part of biologically-
determined human nature.
In reply, socialists have pointed out that the people
concerned were not writing as competent scientists but as
ideologists serving privileged interests and/or pandering to
popular prejudice. In fact the real scientific evidence
proved the opposite: humans were of course the product of
biological evolution but their particular evolutionary
inheritance in the form of a complex brain allowed them to
learn and live out a great variety of different behaviour
patterns; one key feature of human biological nature was
precisely this capacity for flexible behaviour, the capacity
to adapt human behaviour to cope with the challenges
presented by the natural and the social environments which
humans had to live in.
Humans can be competitive, aggressive, possessive, etc but
we can also be—and are—co-operative, friendly and sharing.
Groups of humans have lived in conditions of social equality
in the past and so could do so again. The basic position of
the so-called evolutionary psychologists is put by one of
their gurus, Steven Pinker, in his book, How The Mind Works:
"For ninety-nine percent of human existence, people lived as
foragers in small nomadic herds. Our brains are adapted to
that long-vanished way of life, not to brand-new
agricultural and industrial civilisations. They are not
wired to cope with anonymous crowds, schooling, written
language, government, police, courts, armies, modern
medicine, formal social institutions, high technology, and
other newcomers to the human experience"
If this figure of 99 percent is meant to be taken literally,
and assuming that human societies practising agriculture
first came into being 10,000 years ago, the "people" Pinker
is talking about would be those living about 1 million years
ago. These were certainly members of the genus [censored], but of
the long-extinct species [censored] erectus rather than our own
species [censored] sapiens. In fact modern humans are generally
regarded as not having evolved until some 100,000 or perhaps
150,000 years ago.
Human embryo: inherently greedy?
The argument is not that the human brain is not a biological
adaptation that better fitted humans for surviving, but
whether this adaptation was just best for living as foragers
on the African savannah or whether it was a more general
capacity to adjust to whatever environment humans found
themselves living in.
The fact that even [censored] erectus left Africa to settle and
survive in different environments suggests the latter. This
is strengthened by the fact that the evolutionary
psychologists have failed to come up with any credible
theory as to how complicated behaviour patterns such as they
speak of could be governed by genes. For that's what their
argument amounts to—that the behaviour pattern appropriate
to a foraging life on the African savannah somehow got
imprinted on the brains of the species that immediately
preceded us and which we modern humans have inherited
through our (and their) genes. In fact, it amounts to a
revival, with regard to mental characteristics, of the long-
discredited theory that acquired characteristics can be
inherited.
As a number of contributors to Alas, Poor Darwin. Arguments
Against Evolutionary Psychology (ed. Hilary and Steven Rose,
Jonathan Cape) show, this is not how the brain works. It has
long been known that the 18th century materialist view such
as that of Robert Owen of the mind as a blank sheet on which
the environment can imprint anything is wrong; the brain
plays a much more active role in the learning process. We
also know, thanks to recent advances in genetics and
neuroscience, that some capacities (such as the ability to
distinguish faces or to tell distance and perspective)
correspond to certain parts of the brain. It is this that
the evolutionary psychologists—and others who believe that
complex behaviour patterns are innate and that there is, for
instance, a
ignore is that the brain is not fully "wired up" (to use one
of their favourite metaphors) at birth but that this "wiring
up" is a process that takes place as we grow up and learn
and in fact continues throughout our lives. We are not born
with pre-programmed patterns of behaviour.
We learn how to behave after we are born (indeed, this
starts while we are still in the womb) and in so doing
"programme" or "wire up", or whatever metaphor you want to
use, our brains. We are animals that are capable of adopting
a great variety of behaviour patterns.
The nature of our brain allows us, as participants in a
particular system of society, to "programme" ourselves, in
ways that neuroscience is beginning to understand in more
detail, for living in that society.
This means that it is just as natural for us humans to live
in a society with written language, formal social
institutions and high technology as on the African savannah.
If Pinker and his followers really believe that they are
better adapted genetically to living on the African savannah
than in contemporary capitalism or future socialist society
then there is an easy way to test this: dump them naked in
East Africa and see whether or not the "basic instincts"
they suppose themselves to have allow them to survive better
there than in Boston or Los Angeles.
Unfortunately, Alas, Poor Darwin cannot be recommended as a
fully effective presentation of the case against
evolutionary psychology. Some of the contributors do set out
cogently enough the points made in the previous paragraphs
but, unfortunately, some of the other "arguments against
evolutionary psychology" are trivial or wrong. For instance,
the first contributor merely criticises the form in which
evolutionary psychologists present their arguments while the
second (a raving postmodernist) criticises not just
biological determinism but all determinisms including
therefore social determinisms such as the materialist
conception of history. Even Steven Rose himself questions
the reasonable assumption—in fact the only reasonable
assumption of evolutionary psychology—that humans won't have
changed genetically since we modern humans first evolved
some 100,000 years ago. And a contribution from a physical
anthropologist is a glaring omission.. Someone like Richard
Leakey could have delivered a knock-out blow against the
evolutionary psychologists in the first round.
ADAM BUICK
A professor asked a student, "If you had a choice between
the oppressed and the oppressor which would you choose." The
student replied, "Neither". The Professor shook his head and
stated, "You don't have a choice." The student paused and
said, "The oppressed".