Here we go again… The NYT is giving John Tierney room to lament why women are not represented equally in science. Maybe there is something biologically going on. Steven Pinker and Elizabeth Spelke discussed this years ago. Pinker argued that there must be something biological. Spelke responded that as long as women are being discriminated from birth on (maybe even before then!), we don’t know what really is natural. To me, this is a great example of a misguided nature-nurture approach. Unless we take a systems approach, we cannot explain the low number of women in science – what appears … Continue reading »
I have started to read a book on developmental systems theory (I’ve summarized a little on DST already). It is a fascinating read! And the themes raised are relevant to my recent musings on evolutionary psychology, so I thought I’d muse some more… The chapter I read was a reprint of an article by Daniel Lehrman originally published in 1953 critiquing Konrad Lorenz’s Theory of Instinctive Behavior (the link opens a PDF to the full article, which is excerpted in the chapter in Cycles of Contingency). I would like to touch on a couple of things in response to reading … Continue reading »
Jun 052010
My most exciting discovery during my first year back in school was part of my research for a paper. I had planned on incorporating meme theory into an approach to explaining how beliefs become tradition. Fortunately, my professor pointed me to an article about cultural evolution, which turned me off from memes and turned me onto co-evolution. With excitement, I read about this emerging branch of evolutionary theory (for an introduction, please see the SEP entry). I abandoned that research during the semester when it became clear that my paper idea was way too ambitious. Now that the semester is … Continue reading »
One of the two most common counter-arguments to critiques of marriage is “but monogamy/coupling is natural!” (The other is “but it’s best for the children!” which I will not address here). As a marriage critic, I found that more of a challenge than a convincing counter, so I decided to investigate. Before I share what I found on that topic I want to provide some background information. Most of the claims that monogamy is not natural come from evolutionary psychologists, so I figured looking at that is a first step. I agree with Frans de Waal who suggests that the … Continue reading »
In a recent interview of David Brooks by Charlie Rose, Brooks recounts experiments done by Walter Mischel. Mischel, starting several decades ago, presented 3- and 4-year old kids with the choice of eating a marshmallow now or receiving another one 10 minutes later if they could resist eating that marshmallow in front of them. Mischel noticed by following these kids as they grew up that those who resisted the temptation of instant gratification were more likely to be successful later on. He posits that there might be something genetic going on. It certainly has some deterministic overtones if we can … Continue reading »
May 022009
I admit it. I am angry. Not exactly sure what precisely I am angry about but it’s a reaction to a talk Michael Mamas gave at the Commonwealth Club. I think what I am angry about is how he can present such nonsense so authoritatively and get people to believe it. Nonsense? Who am I to say something a DVM espouses is nonsense? Well, I don’t know it for sure but I have a pretty good hunch that his mixture of quantum physics, evolution, relativism, and hope is nonsense. Sorry. The universe is not filled with a consciousness that is … Continue reading »
Recent Comments