timtyler comments on Problems in evolutionary psychology - Less Wrong

55 Post author: Kaj_Sotala 13 August 2010 06:57PM

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Comment author: Perplexed 13 August 2010 11:28:24PM 6 points [-]

The opposition of Gould, Lewontin, and the Roses needs no citation - you can easily find it by Googling. Jerry Coyne is an outspoken critic - . Larry Moran even more so. This is a fairly gentle explanation of what is wrong with evolutionary psych from the viewpoint of evolutionary biology.

But even more telling was my total inability to Google up any citations at all in which more prominent evolutionary biologists (Dawkins, Doug Futuyma, the late John Maynard Smith, etc) say anything nice about evolutionary psychology. In case you didn't notice, that is a counter-challenge. Please provide a citation showing that any eminent biologist considers evolutionary psychology to be good science.

Comment author: timtyler 13 August 2010 11:37:02PM 0 points [-]

Exhibit 1 is surely http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._O._Wilson - father of sociobiology.

Comment author: Perplexed 14 August 2010 12:55:00AM *  0 points [-]

Yes, but what does this have to do with evolutionary psychology? The wiki article on Wilson never mentions evolutionary psychology. When I Google for "Wilson evolutionary psychology", I find this complaint that Wilson doesn't like "evolutionary psychology" even though the author wants to claim Wilson as the founder of the discipline.

So lets have Exhibit 2. [Edit: minor typo]

Comment author: timtyler 14 August 2010 07:23:00AM *  0 points [-]

The quote seems to be:

"Today, my only complaint is that Wilson has never really embraced the word usage of "evolutionary psychology" and prefers that we consider it nothing more than "human sociobiology"."

Sociobiology came first - evolutionary psychology is a more modern offshoot that only deals with human universals and mostly ignores human culture.