Amazon.com
Turf battles are always interesting and occasionally enlightening. Social scientists have been fairly slow in responding to the encroachment of biologically oriented evolutionary psychology, but they have come to mount a vigorous defense against what they perceive to be an oversimplified and dehumanizing theoretical scheme. Alas, Poor Darwin, edited by sociologist Hilary Rose and neuroscientist Steven P.R. Rose, collects essays from scientists and social critics united in their disdain for the extremes of such EP proponents as Richard Dawkins and Edward O. Wilson. Though many writers rely on arguments based on our seemingly innate revulsion for determinism, often enough they rise up out of their easy rhetoric to score more legitimate points. Evolutionary theorist Stephen Jay Gould, for example, reprises his spandrel metaphor to show that not all biological features were forged in the fires of natural selection. Unfortunately, the reader has to wait until the book's end for the only critique of evolutionary psychology that is both thorough and scientific; Steven Rose's piece is engaging and challenging, pursuing the invaders back to their own territory using the only arguments they're likely to take seriously. Alas, Poor Darwin won't fully satisfy any reader, but it will provoke thought, discussion, and probably more argument among all who are interested in the nature of human nature. --Rob Lightner
From Publishers Weekly
Over the last two decades, certain famous scientists and science writersAamong them E.O. Wilson, Steven Pinker and Robert WrightAhave attempted to explain human behavior on a genetic basis, arguing that genes control, in more or less testable ways, specific human feelings, acts and propensities, from altruism to clarinet playing to rape; that these behaviors have been produced by natural selection; and that evolutionary theory might be both necessary and sufficient to explain much of human thought, action and culture. Together these propositions go under the name of evolutionary psychology. This polemical, often convincing anthology brings 16 prominent scientists and humanists together to say that evolutionary psychology's proponents are wrong, wrong, wrong. British sociologist Hilary Rose and neuroscientist Steven Rose orchestrate attacks on the theory from all angles. Some essays contend that it misunderstands the mechanisms of evolution, and that some of its "proofs" are really tautologies. Others contrast evolutionary psychology's simplistic models with empirical studies of child development and with the lessons of new research on the brain. Molecular biologist Gabriel Dover takes issue with Richard Dawkins's "selfish gene," while philosopher Mary Midgley dissects his popular concept of "memes." Steven Jay Gould distinguishes Darwin's admirable "pluralism" from the neo-"fundamentalism" of evolutionary psychology. Biologist Anne Fausto-Sterling arguest that its story about sex and gender might be no more than a folktale. And anthropologist Tim Ingold attacks factitious "divisions between body, mind and culture" in a fascinating piece on the art of walking. While it would be stimulating to watch the two sides duke it out in one volume, this book makes a number of powerful cases for the anti side. (Oct.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
