About book The Moral Animal: Why We Are The Way We Are: The New Science Of Evolutionary Psychology (1995)
Here's the problem with evolutionary psychology: its style of reasoning is all what I believe the brainy types call ex post facto. That is, practitioners take a look at features or patterns of human behavior today, then ponder about why that kind of activity might have been advantageous in "the evolutionary environment," back when we were out there gathering and scavenging and occasionally trying to take down one of our fellow large mammals. Explanations tend to be extremely tidy, and awfully difficult to test.For all that, many of the ideas of evolutionary psychology seem to have a startling degree of explanatory power. Probably the best-known example regards the widely cross-cultural sexual behavior of men and women. Men's brains, or bodies, or genes, "want" them to sleep with essentially any woman who moves, we are told, because this is in the best interest of pushing his genetic material forward. Women's brains, on the other hand, "want" them to snag and secure a mate who is likely to stick around and help gather food, run off predators, and do the dishes. Since these were successful reproductive strategies back in the day, the logic goes, more humans who embodied these characteristics survived to spawn the next generation.Suspiciously neat and tidy? You bet! Able to explain a nearly universal observation about human behavior in a logical and intuitively attractive fashion? Absolutely! A tricky business, this evolutionary psychology.The Human ConditionRobert Wright's 1994 synopsis of what was at the time still a relatively new academic discipline is beautifully written, balancing provocative arguments with careful reasoning and considerable erudition. He covers, for instance, the pros and cons of polygamy, and polygamy emerges seeming like a pretty reasonable option. The human drive to seek status, our frequent tendency to discount and reject strangers, and our peculiar habit of developing friendships are all traced to the possible genetic advantage that they would confer in the long eons of prehistory.Some readers might be disconcerted by evolutionary psychology's apparent reduction of all human motivation and morality to pure biological self-interest. But this is hardly a new concept. Hobbes blew my mind all the way back in college, after all, with a vigorous argument that whatsoever is the object of any man's appetite or desire, that is it which he for his part calleth good; and the object of his hate and aversion, evil; and of his contempt, vile and inconsiderable. Oh, and he wrote that in 1651. I bet he wasn't the first cynic to come down the path, either.But Wright's look at the human condition is less of a bummer than it could be, anyway. What saves us -- or could save us -- is the mechanism of "love," a genetic tic that confers a reproductive advantage by aiding the survival of the offspring and close relatives of those who possess it. Because kin groups united by love in the evolutionary environment tended to succeed at the expense of every-primate-for-itself kin groups, we have inherited the capacity to feel fond and protective of each other. Now, living in (basically) the post-evolutionary environment, we can more or less choose to extend our capacity of love to people who don't share our genetic material -- friends, a community, a nation, even a stranger on the other side of the world. Ultimately, Wright's prescription for the human condition is much the same of that in Ozzie in his epic rock anthem Crazy Train: "Maybe it's not too late to learn how to love and forget how to hate."There is also some business about whether we possess free will or are just the expressions of a mechanistic brain chemistry. The answer, if I read it right, is that we are probably mechanistic, but it's important not to act like you think so.The Darwinian ConditionThe Moral Animal applies each of its... findings? insights? speculations? ...to the case study of a single human being. That human: Charles Darwin. So, a chapter about the evolutionary psychology of courtship will be followed by a chapter about Darwin's courtship, and how it did or didn't seem to embody evolutionary psychological principles. This structure is pretty weird, to say the least, but in practice it is not nearly as clunky as you might expect. The case-study aspect is actually kind of interesting, and Darwin left a massive-enough paper trail that there's plenty of documentary evidence of his thinking. Plus, the continuous weaving of the modern perspective with Darwin's own development of his ideas points out areas where he anticipated ideas that wouldn't be fully developed for more than a century, where he went off on tangents that have since been discredited, and where he seems to have been afraid to tread.My only complaint about this book is that it is seventeen years old. It is written very much as a dispatch from a new and exciting area of science, and I am sure that much has happened in the interim. Are Wright's ideas now passé? Have they been bolstered and supplemented by lots of exciting new research? I dunno. Meanwhile, a few details he cites in support of his arguments, in particular relating to modern hunter-gather societies and to neurochemistry, are so out of date that even a casual reader dude like myself can flag them. I imagine that someone has written a newer synthesis of the field. I just hope that they wrote it half as gracefully and entertainingly as Wright wrote The Moral Animal.
Morality is fine. I think. Evolutionary psychology is fine. I think. In fact, I think all kinds of moral philosophy and psychology are fine. I have no bones to pick with any of the foregoing. My problem is with Mr. Wright and his style and his manner of thinking and his manner of research. There are science journalists, like Mr. Wright, who are satisfied and contented with presenting the results of their research and not going beyond the confines of the conclusions reached by the scientists for whom they speak. Writers who understand the dangers and difficulties of stretching what has been found to be true. There is, however, for many writers, a great temptation to try to please the greatest possible number of readers and thereby increase whatever their success might otherwise have been. And then, in a rather different vein, there are writers who themselves are only comfortable if they are able to present a message in tune with their own personal values and aspirations, regardless of whether those values or aspirations are consistent with what is actually the case.Mr. Wright appears to me to be one of the latter. A writer who personally needs to be the presenter of what he believes to be appropriately positive thoughts and opinions. Which is a shame. Mr. Wright is obviously an intelligent and perceptive person. He has no real need to cast himself as one of the more inanely optimistic science journalists of today. To an extent he does create the impression of wanting to be a nineteenth century Pollyanna, someone always able to draw sunshine conclusions from November data. In other words, Mr. Wright appears to go beyond his facts, and thereby loses substantially. Of course, there are many readers willing quite happily to pay for such interpretations. Probably more than are only satisfied with restrained and obviously sensible conclusions. But whether the problem is that of Mr. Wright alone, or of he and his editor, the final result in this book is to create and sustain the impression that Mr. Wright is willing to trim his sails to the wind whatever the weather may be.For those who wish no more from their science journalism than they receive Sunday morning in the pews of a happiness church, this is an appropriate work. For any wanting more, or for those having distinct standards to which they wish their science reading to comply, this book will be disappointing. The subject of the book is fascinating and always appropriate. That subject will have to wait for a different expositor for readers who want a soberly accurate treatment.
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Evolutionary Psychology is a dangerous field. In all of evolutionary science, there's a lot of temptation to endorse a just-so-story that happens to fit all your current data (or worse, ignore some of the data as noise). But this is Human evolution we are talking about and thus it becomes even more important that we A) get the story right B) understand how general trends apply to individual cases and C) don't draw think that science can dictate morality.Surprisingly, the book is best on point C, showing how science can inform some moral debates but not settle them. It's also good on point B, making the qualification several times, but perhaps not forcefully enough for it to really sink in for all readers. Point A is my biggest issue. The majority of the book was well argued, well documented, and likely right. The problem is that when the author is speculating, he tends not to tell you he is. The book might be a "must read" for everyone, but it's a "must read carefully".I especially loved the use of Darwin's life for examples and the comparisons to J.S. Mill and Samuel Smiles, all of three of whom published classic works in 1859.
—Jeremy
He doesn't find your cat story interesting, and he won't call in the morning. He has gazillions of sperm and you have 400 eggs. Harry was right when he told Sally men and women can't be friends. Any guy who tells you otherwise is just trying to sleep with you. They're all trying to sleep with you, all the time. Your co-workers, your friends, the traffic cop, your high school math teacher, your cousins, all of them. all the time. Even the gay ones. And that's why they invented fire, the wheel, carrots, sport cars, and football. To get some.
—Christian Clarke
I'm less than half way through this and I still can't find out what the author's focus is. He started out with a description of some of the different ideas about evolutionary psychology. Then he shifted to the biography of Darwin. Then to early childhood development. Now he is drawing conclusions, loosely based on Darwin's personal history and some of his letters, that I seriously question.I hope that this book gets better and a little more focused.-Joe-I'm 3/4 of the way through and the author does not have a focus. This is just a bunch of notes (some totally unrelated). I'll not finish this book. The title and description are very misleading.-Joe-
—Joe
