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THINKING ABOUT SCIENCE
MASSIMO PIGLIUCCI
Is Evolutionary Psychology a
Pseudoscience?
E
volutionary psychology is the Palmer’s A Natural History of Rape: Unfortunately, the simple solution pro-
most current incarnation of Biological Bases of Sexual Coercion, which posed by Popper, falsificationism, doesn’t
what started out as sociobiology, fared only slightly better, both in con- work for a variety of reasons (see
a branch of evolutionary theory aimed tent and critical reception. “Thinking about Science” May/June
at explaining the behavior of animals From a purely scientific perspective 2004 and September/October 2004).
(and in particular, humans) as the (insofar as is possible with such an emo- John Casti, in his marvelous Paradigms
result of evolutionary processes, espe- tionally and politically charged issue), the Lost, tackles the same problem and lists a
cially natural selection. The turning question can be asked: Is evolutionary series of characteristics of pseudoscience
point for this research program was the psychology a legitimate branch of evolu- that may be used as a reference point.
publication in 1975 of Sociobiology: tionary biology, or does it approximate These include anachronistic thinking,
The New Synthesis, by Edward O. more the status of a pseudoscience, as its the glorification of mysteries, the appeal
Wilson, a first-rate student of social critics have often contended? To be sure, to myths, a cavalier approach to evi-
insects. Wilson’s book would have the overarching idea that behaviors (and dence, an appeal to irrefutable hypothe-
raised little controversy, if it were not therefore cognitive traits) can evolve, and ses, the emphasis on probably spurious
for the last chapter, where he extended sometimes do so as the result of natural similarities, explanation by scenario
his approach to human beings, which selection, is a truism that is hard to chal- (“story telling”), “literary” rather than
he did more fully in 1978 with his On lenge. The question, rather, is whether we empirically based interpretations of facts,
Human Nature. can have sufficient evidence that natural extreme resistance to revising one’s posi-
The debate that ensued was ideolog- selection has shaped any particular tions, a tendency to shift the burden of
ically and politically biased on both human behavioral pattern. To quote one proof, and sympathy for a theory just
sides, and it included ugly episodes such of the most preeminent critics of evolu- because it’s new or daring.
as Stephen Gould publishing two nega- tionary psychology, geneticist Richard Based on these criteria, the verdict
tive reviews of Wilson’s book (a behavior Lewontin, “I must say that the best lesson for evolutionary psychology is a mixed
that borders on the unethical), and of our readers can learn is to give up the one. Let us take as a paradigmatic exam-
course, the famous instance of Wilson childish notion that everything that is ple Thornhill and Palmer’s idea that rape
being treated to a shower of cold water interesting about nature can be under- may be a selected strategy for lower-
and ice by an activist student attending stood. . . . It might be interesting to ranking males to “sneak in” some repro-
a scientific meeting. know how cognition (whatever that is) ductive fitness, considering that they
On the other side of the divide, arose and spread and changed, but we
sociobiology’s cause has not been helped cannot know. Tough luck.” Massimo Pigliucci is a professor of evolu-
by the publication of borderline intellec- Raising the question of whether evo- tionary biology at SUNY–Stony Brook, a
tually sound works such as Herrnstein lutionary psychology is a pseudoscience fellow of the American Association for the
and Murray’s The Bell Curve: Intelligence in turn naturally leads us to ask what the Advancement of Science, and the author
and Class Structure in American Life, characteristics of a pseudoscience are, of Denying Evolution: Creationism,
with its largely unsubstantiated claims which philosopher Karl Popper famously Scientism, and the Nature of Science.
about genetic determinism of human referred to as the “demarcation prob- His essays can be found at www.ration
cognitive traits, and Thornhill and lem” between science and nonscience. allyspeaking.org.
S K E P T I C A L I N Q U I R E R M a rc h / A p r i l 2 0 0 6 2 3
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would otherwise not have access to Pleistocene. The irony here is that this another unfortunate accident of history:
females. Regardless of how distasteful explanation is both reasonable and for the comparative method to work
the idea is from a moral perspective, it is essentially untestable. It is certainly rea- properly, one needs many closely related
of course perfectly sound from a biolog- sonable to think that natural selection species to compare (to achieve statistical
ical one. After all, there is in fact well- acted for a long time in premodern pop- power). Alas, we have only a handful of
documented evidence that “rape” ulations and affected both their appear- living relatives (one or two species of
(defined more neutrally as forced access ance and behavior; on the other hand, chimps, and one or two of gorillas), and
to females) is present in a variety of ani- unfortunately, behaviors have an annoy- they are actually separated from us by
mal species. The trouble starts when one ing tendency not to leave a fossil record, several millions of years of independent
looks for corroborating evidence. To and neither do the details of the (largely evolution. As Lewontin remarked, it
begin with, there is actually convincing social and cultural) environment under would be nice to know, but it looks like
data out there to show that rape cer- which natural selection allegedly oper- we simply don’t have enough historical
tainly doesn’t pay as a reproductive strat- ated throughout recent human evolu- traces to make much progress.
egy in today’s society. This is because of tion. This makes resorting to Pleistocene While all of this doesn’t make evolu-
abortion and because the risk to the per- scenaria a “just-so story,” with very little tionary psychology a typical example of
petrator is very high. (If caught, he can scientific content or relevance. pseudoscience, say like astrology or
be locked away for a long time, dramat- The other major route available to parapsychology, it certainly moves it
ically reducing his chances of passing evolutionary psychologists is the so- away from mainstream evolutionary
genes to the next generation.) called comparative method, i.e., the pos- biology and into a territory uncomfort-
Evolutionary psychologists then sibility to study the evolution of a char- ably close to purely historical research,
resort to a typical strategy to salvage acteristic by comparing a focal species where reasonable scenaria are the best
their theory: the modern behavior did (humans) to their close relatives (the one can hope for and hard data are dif-
not evolve in response to the highly great apes). But once again, we run into ficult to come by or interpret. Did
derived current environmental condi- the same problem that, while this Napoleon lose at Waterloo because he
tions, but rather to the conditions approach is indeed widely used in evolu- had indigestion and was not feeling too
prevalent during the crucial period of tionary biology, it simply doesn’t work in well? It’s a reasonable hypothesis, but we
human history that occurred in the the case of our own species. The reason is aren’t likely to find out. !
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