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Evolutionary Psychology: It Would Be a Great IdeaI'm all for evolutionary psychology. After all, evolution is one of the great achievements of science. Psychology (and sociology and anthropology) should be informed by biology, just as they should obey the laws of chemistry and physics. I'm all for evolutionary psychology. I just wish someone would develop one. What passes for evo-psych now is just discredited sociobiology is a cheap tuxedo. Evolution is a biological process, not a metaphor. I don't think it is too much to ask that proponents of a scientific evolutionary psychology understand evolution. Nor do I think it is too much to ask that any scientific theory be based on empirical data and not elaborations of stereotypes and just-so stories that appeal to those stereotypes. Like I said, evolutionary psychology — it would be a great idea. I've just finished reading the chapter on evo-psych in Natalie Angier's Woman: An Intimate Geography. It is a thorough and amusing fisking of the testosterone-fueled musings of Evolutionary Psychology. Angier, a Pulitzer Prize winning science writer, splendidly reduces this pseudo-science to its essence:
This currently fashionable dreck is bad science in the service of boorish sexism. Thank goodness for astute, eloquent writers such as Angier for exposing EP for what it is. It will be all but impossible to create a real evolutionary psychology as long as this self-satisfied, intellectually lazy version is holding court in the social sciences.
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The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among millions of the working people and the few, who make up the employing class, have all the good things of life. Between these two classes a struggle must go on until the workers of the world organize as a class, take possession of the means of production, abolish the wage system, and live in harmony with the Earth. -- IWW In a democracy it is necessary that people should learn to endure having their sentiments outraged. -- Bertrand Russell Let us strangle the last king with the entrails of the last priest. -- Denis Diderot It's not that no one sees the straight line to Doomtown we've been on since Reagan, it's that there's big profits in it. The most superficially Christian and Other-Worldly-Yearning nation in the developed world is the one most likely to kill you for your shoes. -- Doghouse Riley The true purpose of education is to try to foster in students a kind of critical cosmopolitanism, such that they learn, among other things, to question any notion that one’s nation or tribe is favored by God or destiny. -- Michael Bérubé It is not enough to decry the existence of the Spectacle. We intend to use both art and theory as a battering ram against Capitalism and its false opposition, tribalism, in all of its mystical forms. We believe it is possible to move beyond the inexcusable savagery of everyday life. -- The Anti-Naturals Smartest Blogs in North AmericaSites I ReadDisclaimer!For those readers a little slow on the uptake—you know who you are—please keep in mind that the messages I post to this weblog reflect my own views as a private individual and do not represent any institution or organization with which I might be affiliated. Messages posted by other authors express their views and not necessarily those of the management. For the comments policy, consult the terms of use. Dangerous Theorizing! |