- A couple of evolutionary psychologists recently published a book about human sexual behavior in prehistory called “Sex at Dawn.” Upon hearing of the project, one colleague, dubious that a modern scholar could hope to know anything about that period, asked them, “So what do you do, close your eyes and dream?”
Yes! I love this article, because although Darwinian explanations can account for a huge, huge sum of our physiological and psychological natures, it does NOT provide an excuse for social assumptions. Gender differences, ethnic differences, all manner of differences are not so easily summed up by just writing it off as somehow beneficial due to our evolution as a species, and I am so glad that people are going back to an evidentialist approach. Don't get me wrong, evolutionary explanations rule, and often make a lot of sense. But being internally consistent is not enough for proof. We have to test a lot of this stuff, and that means getting real data - not common sense data. It's fine to say that you think women are more sexually selective because it's got an evolutionary advantage to be that way; what is the evidence to back it up? That's what we should be asking about our "common sense" and our "social norms." And when we start to get to evolutionary explanations of things that exist in our neocortex - such as higher emotions, language, and abstract thinking and the capacity for reason - that's when we start to open ourselves up to things that go from educated hypothesis to mere guessing and assumptions. I really hope this line of inquiry continues, because frankly, I'm sick of people who use "instinct" and "natural tendencies" to explain insulting stereotypes or their own boorish behavior. The human mind and social condition is far too complex to be solved with a few pithy, surface-level explanations that fail to account for the diversity of humans. Figuring out what makes us tick won't be accomplished without a serious follow-through in finding evidence and seriously considering that our common sense is not enough for science.