Alas Poor Darwin: Arguments Against Evolutionary Psychology [Paperback]

Alas, Poor Darwin is a disparate collection of essays by scientists, philosophers and social commentators all attacking the emerging field of evolutionary psychology. It's a familiar set of complaints: evolutionary psychology is "simplistic", "reductionist" and "adaptationist". But many of the attacks are just political and there's a blatant attempt to smear the subject with morally bankrupt beliefs like eugenics. So what exactly are the nasty ideas advocated by these deluded evolutionary psychologists? Well, er......

1) The mind is what the brain does.

2) The brain is a biological organ that shows enormous adaptive complexity.

3) The only known non-miraculous mechanism that can account for the origin of adaptive complexity is natural selection.

4) Hence, many (though certainly not all) aspects of our psychology are likely to have been moulded at least in part by natural selection. The brain is not a general all-purpose problem-solving device. It solves some classes of problems brilliantly and others surprisingly badly. The evolutionary psychologists are simply asking why? Their answer, in broad terms, is that the brain (and hence the mind) is brimming with specifically evolved features that are adaptively useful - or at least were in the ancestral environment in which we evolved. Furthermore, these features are likely to be present in all neurologically normal members of our species. They include not just things like visual awareness and the other senses, but many other psychological attributes such as sexual desire, the emotions, the ability to gauge the mental states of others and perhaps even the way we think about logical problems.

5) Because different mental adaptations are specialised to solve different types of problems, the mind is likely to be modular. In this view for example, the capacity for language is a specifically evolved mental feature whose adaptive complexity clearly reveals the fingerprints of natural selection. By contrast, the idea that language just emerged as a non-selected by-product of a general increase in brain size (Stephen Jay Gould' s "spandrel" theory), seems utterly ridiculous and really is a "Just So Story".

I'll take Hilary and Steven Rose seriously when they provide examples of societies with no anger or sexual jealousy; societies whose members smile when they are disgusted; societies where young men are more sexually attracted to 90 year old women than to 20 year old women or societies where no one wants to form friendships and alliances. Of course evolutionary psychologists accept the importance of "learning" and "culture" to influence our minds. But "culture" doesn't just float around us like some mysterious ectoplasm. It's the product of interacting minds, the product of our brains. Now the adaptive complexity and developmental plasticity of the human brain are precisely those features that make culture possible - but these are both evolved properties that need explaining in their own right.

Like the proverbial curate's egg, this book is good in parts, though indigestible when taken whole. The worst essay is from the postmodernist Charles Jencks. His contribution is little more than pretentious hot air. Indeed, it's so daft that at first I half thought it might be an Alan Sokal-style hoax. Can the scientists do any better? Some, like Patrick Bateson have important and subtle things to say. Others such as Gabriel Dover are content merely to attack straw men. But mostly the authors just ritually condemn the usual suspects. Pinker, Dawkins, Wilson et al are WRONG, so there! But what's the alternative? All we get is a lot of hand waving about how it's so very, very complicated. This is not to say that individual evolutionary psychologists have got it all right. Like any science, there is good work and bad work. Predictably, the Roses criticise Randy Thornhill's theory about rape. Fair enough; but there is much better than this. For example, Simon Baron-Cohen's insightful studies on autism are first rate, and clearly influenced by the ideas of evolutionary psychology, yet they don't get a single mention in the whole book. Steven Rose in particular should reflect that his own field (the biochemical basis of vertebrate memory) was initially dismissed by many biochemists as cranky and ironically, "too reductionist". There was good reason for this scepticism as some embarrassingly dire stuff was done in the very early days. But that doesn't mean that the whole enterprise was fundamentally misguided. Indeed today, with proper controls, the field is perfectly respectable.

So, the evolutionary psychologists may well be wrong about specific details and some of their theories probably are too simplistic; but it's a start and at least they're doing experiments. As for the claim that it is morally pernicious, well this is just the naturalistic fallacy. But if you really do insist on a moral message, it could be argued that evolutionary psychology caries a cautiously positive one: that the wide cultural variations between different peoples are more apparent than real, because fundamentally, deep, deep down, our minds are all built to the same basic recipe.

Like many edited books, the contributors' approaches to the subject matter differ so as to make it difficult to provide an overall review. The editors admit as much, observing that the contributors "do not speak with a single voice" (p9), which seems to a coded admission that they frequently contradict one another. For example, Fausto-Sterling chides evolutionary psychologists for sexism in viewing the female orgasm as a mere by-product (women "did not even evolve their own orgasms" (p176) she complains) while Gould (p103-4) chides them for purportedly viewing every trait as an adaptation and ignoring the possibility of by-products.

Some chapters are essentially irrelevant to the project of evolutionary psychology. One, that of Dawkins-stalker (and part-time philosopher) Mary Midgley, critiques the separate field of memetics.

A singularly uninsightful chapter by 'disability activist' Tom Shakespeare and a colleague seems to say nothing with which an evolutionary psychologist would disagree. Only at the end of their chapter do they make the obligatory reference to 'just-so stories', and, more bizarrely, to the "single-gene determinism of the biological reductionists" (p203). Yet, evolutionary psychologists emphasise to the point of repetitiveness that, while they may talk of 'genes for' certain characteristics as a form of shorthand, nothing in their theories implies a one-to-one concordance between single genes and behaviours. Indeed, the irrelevance of some chapters to their supposed subject-matter makes one wonder whether some contributors have ever actually read any of the primary literature in the field - or whether their entire knowledge (or lack thereof) of evolutionary psychology is filtered through to them via the critiques of their fellow contributors.

Annette Karmiloff-Smith's chapter is a critique of what she refers to as nativism, namely the belief that certain brain structures (or modules) are innately hardwired into the brain at birth. This chapter, perhaps alone, may have value as a critique of some strands of EP. However, the nativist thesis she associates with evolutionary psychology is rejected by many evolutionary psychologists (e.g. Human Evolutionary Psychology) and not integral to evolutionary psychology. Evolutionary psychology posits that behaviour have been shaped by natural selection to maximise the reproductive success of organisms in ancestral environments. It therefore allows us to bypass the proximate level of causation by saying that, how ever the brain is structured and develops in interaction with its environment, given that this brain evolved by a process of natural selection, it must be such as to produce behaviour which maximises the reproductive success of its bearer under ancestral conditions. (This is sometimes referred to as the 'phenotypic gambit'). The issue of nativism is therefore bypassed.

Stephen Jay Gould's Deathbed Conversion to Evolutionary Psychology

Undoubtedly the best known contributor is the late Stephen J Gould. Such is his renown that he evidently did not feel the need to actually contribute an original chapter to the volume, but rather felt it sufficient to recycle a NYT book-review. It is a critical review of a book (Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life (Penguin Science)), itself critical of Gould, a form of academic self-defence. Neither the book nor the review by Gould deal primarily with the field of evolutionary psychology, but rather address more general issues within evolutionary biology.

Yet the most remarkable revelation of Gould's chapter - especially given that it appears in a book ostensibly critiquing evolutionary psychology - is that the best-known and most widely-cited erstwhile opponent of evolutionary psychology is apparently no longer any such thing. On the contrary, he now views evolutionary psychology as potentially "quite useful" (p102).

Most strikingly, he acknowledges that "the most promising theory of evolutionary psychology [is] the recognition that differing Darwinian requirements for males and females imply distinct adaptive behaviours centred on male advantage in spreading sperm as widely as possible... and female strategy for extracting time and attention from males" (Ibid.). In other words, he accepts the position of evolutionary psychologists in that most controversial of areas - innate sex differences!

Notwithstanding Gould's arrogant tone (rather than admit he was wrong he instead implies he had maintained this stance all along and even that it was his constructive criticism which led to advances in the field and the development of evolutionary psychology from sociobiology), his backtracking is a welcome development. Given that he passed away only a couple of years after the current volume was published, one can almost characterise his backtracking as a deathbed conversion.

On the other hand, his criticisms of evolutionary psychology have not evolved at all but merely retread familiar gripes with which evolutionary psychologists dealt long ago. For example, he repeats the tired charge of 'ultra-Darwinism', whereby evolutionary psychologists purportedly view every trait as an adaptation (p103-4). This claim is easily rebutted by simply reading the primary literature. For example, Daly and Wilson see the high rate of homicide of stepchildren, not as adaptive, but as a by-product of discriminative parental solicitude, whereby parents care less for such children (The Truth about Cinderella: A Darwinian View of Parental Love (Darwinism Today)). Donald Symons argues that the female orgasm is merely a by-product of the male orgasm (The Evolution of Human Sexuality). Similarly, the authors of A Natural History of Rape: Biological Bases of Sexual Coercion (Bradford Books), are divided as to whether rape is an adaptation or a by-product of men's greater desire for commitment-free sex.

[Evolutionary psychologists generally prefer the term by-product to Gould's coinage 'spandrel'. The invention of jargon to baffle non-specialists (e.g. referring to animal rape as "forced copulation" as the Roses advocate: p2) is the preserve of subjects suffering from 'physics-envy', according to 'Dawkins' First Law of the Conservation of Difficulty'.]

Gould then claims sociobiological theories are inherently untestable. Yet one only has to flick through copies of journals like Evolution and Human Behaviour, Human Nature or Evolutionary Psychology to see evolutionary hypotheses being tested every month. As evidence, rather than citing the academic literature, he cites Robert Wright's claim in a work of popular science, (The Moral Animal), that our sweet tooth evolved "in an environment in which fruit existed but candy didn't". Bizarrely he chides Wright for citing "no paleontological data about ancestral feeding" (p100), ignoring the fact that Wright is a populariser not an academic. (Gould evidently believes we need "paleontological data" to demonstrate that fruit is not a recent invention and that chocolate bars are.)

Straw Men and Fabricated Quotations

Rather than countering the claims of actual evolutionary psychologists, contributors resort to misrepresenting and caricaturing evolutionary psychology. In the case of co-editor, Hillary Rose, this crosses the line from rhetorical deceit to outright defamation of character when, on p116, she attributes to David Barash an offensive quotation violating the naturalistic fallacy by purporting to justify rape by reference to its biological function.

However, Barash simply does not say the words she attributes to him on the page she cites or any other page in The Whisperings Within. (I know. I own a copy of the book.) On the contrary, after a discussion of the adaptive function of rape among mallards, he merely ventures tentatively that, although vastly more complex, human rape may be analogous.

This completely fabricated quotation is merely the most egregious example in the volume of the rhetorical tactic of constructing of 'straw man', or attributing to evolutionary psychologists views which they never in fact asserted so as to render the task of attacking evolutionary psychology less arduous.

Is Steven Rose a Scientific Racist?

Finally, I will deal with the curious case of Steven Rose, the book's other editor. Unlike Stephen J Gould, he does not repent his sins and embrace evolutionary psychology. However, in maintaining his crusade against evolutionary psychology and sociobiology and all related heresies, he apparently inadvertently performs a transformation in many ways even more dramatic, and more far-reaching in its consequences, than that of Gould. To understand why, we must examine Rose's position in more depth.

Steven Rose is not a creationist. He is therefore obliged to reconcile his opposition to evolutionary psychology with recognition that the brain is a product of evolution. Ironically, this leads him to employ evolutionary arguments against evolutionary psychology. For example, Rose defends group-selectionism (p257-9). Similarly, he argues that sufficient time has elapsed since the Pleistocene for complex adaptations to have evolved (p1-2). Read more ›

Before writing this review I read the book and previous reviews. Opinions seemed to fall into two distinct categories. On the one hand evolutionary psychology is depicted as a load of dangerous nonsense, infecting clear thought with biological determinism in support of right wing political racism and sexism which is unacceptable in a neo-socialist society. The alternative view is that evolutionary psychology is the key to understanding universal human nature which can be determined by rejecting the blank page theory of the Standard Social Science Model and replacing it with a new model based on the evolutionary adaptation of basic human psychology of aggression, parenting and sexuality.

Evolutionary psychology is a development of the gene centred theories of Richard Dawkins and E O Wilson. In their introduction to the book Hilary and Steven Rose see in evolutionary psychology the same impulse which led to support for Social Darwinism and eugenics most of which was thought to have been discredited half a century ago. In attacking the supposed right wing agenda of evolutionary psychology the various authors also attack the presuppositions underlying it.

The contributors come from a variety of fields which evolutionary psychology claimed to over-ride in seeking to understand human nature. Dorothy Nelkin suggested the new discipline was attempting serve as a form of scientific Christianity. Others attacked Dawkins's theory of The Selfish Gene and his idea of memes while the notion of human behaviour as being partitioned between learned and instinctive is rejected on the grounds that it ignores the concept of process.

E O Wilson appears to believe he discovered that evolution was an explanation for everything, or as he put it, "science is religion liberated and writ large". Unfortunately Wilson's new theory appears to have been less of a paradigm and more of a parody. He sought to explain the human social order in biological terms. This tends to ignore changes attributable to other factors. Underlying Wilson's claims is the belief that Darwin was right, materialism is all there is and philosophy is a waste of intellect. Wilson appears not to understand that rather than liberating science from religion he has sought to replace religion with science by assuming the former is inevitably wrong and the latter inevitably right. Ultimately, of course, it remains an assumption.

That assumption needs to be questioned philosophically. Are we driven by sex, power and money or by truth, beauty and goodness? Is everything we do the expression of our basic sex drive?. Are we what we are by nature or by nurture? Evolutionary psychologists are criticised for adopting a universalist approach which avoids specific studies of variation in behaviour and relies on artificial modular analysis. They are accused of being reductionist, internally self-referring and resistant to valid social and philosophical criticism, rather than being comprehensive.

The jargon of evolutionary psychology - and it is jargon rather than terminology - is a regurgitation of ideas first peddled by Ricardo, Malthus et.al., some of which provided Darwin with the intellectual justification for claiming evolution by natural selection. Darwin's own studies identified adaptation but no more. It was Malthus's bad socio-economic analysis which provided him with an intellectual framework within which he could wrap a new theory for the chattering classes. Anyone assuming Darwin was right tends to avoid addressing this point.

Many of the book's critics claim it has a political purpose. This is true. However, to dismiss criticism as ideology masquerading as science is an over-simplification.

Evolutionary psychology is based on assumptions which look increasingly tenuous and research which is bland to the point of meaningless. One does not have to be a creationist to wonder if there is a teleological purpose to the universe, or question the historical accuracy of evolutionary theory. Such thoughts appear anathema to those who expect everyone to share their opinions because they believe they know better. In that sense those reviewers who expected a critique of evolutionary psychology in its own terms have missed the point. For philosophers and social scientists evolutionary psychology is an irrelevance to detached intellectual study.

There are far better intellectual critiques of the concept. What this book does is to attack the pretentious nature of the discipline (if indeed it is a discipline), denying its claim to introduce a new way of thinking about, or an understanding of, human nature. It is at times polemical rather than neutral but it was designed to cricitise evolutionary psychology for claiming to provide a model which is applicable outside its own terms. For many, people such as Wilson and Dawkins are fanatics who have long since given up any serious notion of competing in the marketplace of ideas but have sought to monopolise the market with scientism. Straw men they may be but they are well known scarecrows.

This is not a book which will appeal to those who share evolutionary psychologists' assumptions and are unwilling to have their assumptions questioned. It will, however, appeal to those who are able to distinguish between polemics and purpose. Hopefully there are still people who can read a book they dislike without dismissing it as rubbish.