Login
Forgot Password?

OR

Login with Google Login with Twitter Login with Facebook
  • Join
  • Profiles
  • Groups
  • SuicideGirls
  • Photos
  • Videos
  • Shop
Vital Stats Tip

flux

SG Since 2003

Followers 7747 Following 203

  • Everything
  • Photos
  • Video
  • Blogs
  • Groups
  • From Others

Thursday Jun 02, 2011

Jun 2, 2011
0
  • Facebook
  • Tweet
  • Email
The best part about reading evolutionary psychology journals is finding rationalizations for every bad habit and horrible quality one has.

I was really sad when that "blondes are aggressive warrior princesses" thing turned out to be misspoken.
VIEW 22 of 22 COMMENTS
waldo_jeffers:
I once read a book in which evolutionary psychology was described as being something akin to "Just So Stories" (remember Rudyard Kipling's "Just So Stories"?).

The book was called "Not in Our Genes: Biology, Ideology and Human Nature" by Steven Rose, Leon Kamin and Richard Lewontin.

Rose (a Biochemist and Professor of Neurobiology), Kamin (a Psychologist) and Lewontin (an Evolutionary Biologist) argue against biologically reductivist explanations of human behavioural / psychological traits. They also spend a brief part of the book arguing against culturally reductivist explanations. For them, any form of reductivism whether biological or cultural is misguided.

They specifically attack the Sociobiology of EO Wilson and the biological reductivism of Richard Dawkins.

The book also spends a bit of time attacking the notion that IQ is hereditary and criticising Cyril Burt (arguing that Burt's classic research on IQ heritability in twins was based on data that he had made up) and a couple of his followers Arthur Jensen and Hans Eysenck (both of whom have claimed that there are genetically determined IQ differences between black and white people). Kamin was among the first to demonstrate that Burt had faked his IQ research data.

It has been a fair few years since I read this book (I first read it back in the early 1990s when I was at university studying for a joint honours degree in Biochemistry and Philosophy) so my memory of the book may not be 100% accurate.

Personally, I don't find it credible that a full explanation of human behavioural / psychological traits can be put together without including the role of both genetic and environmental factors. Even if Rose, Kamin and Lewontin aren't completely correct they make a very important point. Claims by scientists to have found biological explanations for human behavioural / psychological traits are often treated as firm fact by the media and are not subject to sufficent scrutiny, when the actual research data may only support conclusions of a more equivocal nature.
Jun 4, 2011
elwood:
Don't believe it for a second. ...It's a conspiracy to shake your confidence.
Jun 5, 2011

More Blogs

  • 11.20.05
    33

    Sunday Nov 20, 2005

    Just got back from Walk the Line. Yeah, I cried a little bit. U…
  • 10.14.05
    31

    Saturday Oct 15, 2005

    I'm either five or eighty-five. I don't think I'm capable of intel…
  • 10.11.05
    36

    Tuesday Oct 11, 2005

    I have a secret. Oryx knows it too. Soon you'll know the secret, an…
  • 08.16.05
    65

    Tuesday Aug 16, 2005

    Read More
  • 08.05.05
    32

    Saturday Aug 06, 2005

    Today has been really, really fucked up. Who the hell commits a dr…
  • 07.31.05
    41

    Sunday Jul 31, 2005

    Don't you hate it when the stars converge and your hair comes out the…
  • 07.29.05
    23

    Friday Jul 29, 2005

    Tonight we're going to party like it's 1989!
  • 07.24.05
    48

    Sunday Jul 24, 2005

    Lego Star Wars, Pocky, and Taittinger. Life is so gorgeous sometim…
  • 07.13.05
    20

    Jolene Siana - Author of Go Ask Ogre

    Jolene Siana has serious guts. Not only did she send boxes of letter…
  • 06.30.05
    25

    Friday Jul 01, 2005

    fuck you, buddy

We at SuicideGirls have been celebrating alternative pin-up girls for:

23
years
9
months
6
days
  • 5,509,826 fans
  • 41,393 fans
  • 10,327,617 followers
  • 4,593 SuicideGirls
  • 1,120,333 followers
  • 14,919,693 photos
  • 321,315 followers
  • 61,389,486 comments
  • Join
  • Profiles
  • Groups
  • Photos
  • Videos
  • Shop
  • Help
  • About
  • Press
  • LIVE

Legal/Tos | DMCA | Privacy Policy | 18 U.S.C. 2257 Record-Keeping Requirements Compliance Statement | Contact Us | Vendo Payment Support
©SuicideGirls 2001-2025

Press enter to search
Fast Hi-res

Click here to join & see it all...

Crop your photo