Excellent former SciAm blogger Kate Clancy takes on a recent paper by a friend of mine here at Macquarie, Michael Gillings, that makes the argument that PMS may be an evolutionary adaptation for getting women to bust up their pair bonds, especially if theyre infertile. Michaels research on microbial life and the Anthropocene is great, but theres a huge stream of evolutionary psychology at Macquarie that I have trouble with for all kinds of reasons. So much of it begins with assertions about human nature that are based on close-to-home anecdotal samples and no rigorous examination of the cross-cultural literature on modern Homo sapiens, so it all starts with a potential problem of mistaking WEIRD subjects for evolutionary ancestors. I really struggle when I talk to colleagues about this because I canNOT understand why they dont seem to care when I point out the problems with Western subjects (happened to me again yesterday meeting with an evolutionary psychologist who works on a phenomenon that I suspect is strongly culture bound). The issue is especially troubling to me because I like both evolutionary theory and psychology, and -- in theory -- think that some of the general principled reasons one might put the two in conversation are pretty good. And then someone shows me a paper in evolutionary psychology and I find myself grinding my molars smooth before I even get through the abstract at what look to me like freshman evolutionary theory errors like rampant adaptationism, the phenotypic gambit and species essentialism.
Posted on: Tue, 19 Aug 2014 21:29:46 +0000
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