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Thursday, August 18, 2005
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[Evolutionary Psychology] claims that our minds contain hundreds or thousands of "mental organs" or "modules," which come with innate information on how to solve particular problems—how to interpret nuanced facial expressions, how to tell when someone's lying or cheating. These problem-solving modules evolved between 1.8 million and 10,000 years ago, during the Pleistocene epoch. And there the selection story ends. There has not been enough time in the intervening millenia, EP-ers say, for natural selection to have further resculpted our psyches. "Our modern skulls house a Stone Age mind," as Cosmides' and Tooby's primer on evolutionary psychology puts it. The way forward for research is to generate hypotheses about the urges that would have been helpful to Stone Age baby-making and then try to test whether these tendencies are widespread today.
What's wrong with this approach? To begin with, we know very little about the specific adaptive problems faced by our distant forebears. As Buller points out, "We don't even know the number of species in the genus Homo"—our direct ancestors—"let alone details about the lifestyles led by those species." This makes it hard to generate good hypotheses. Some EP-ers have suggested looking to modern-day hunter-gatherers as proxies, studying them for clues about our ancestors. But this doesn't get them far. For instance, in some contemporary African groups, men gather the bulk of the food; in other groups, women do. Which groups are representative of our ancestors? Surely there's a whole lot of guesswork involved when evolutionary psychologists hypothesize about the human brain's supposedly formative years.
12:40:50 PM 
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This morning at the Breakfast Cabal, the challenge was to name a hero, and it was fun hearing what people said. Probably the most deserving names were Brewster Kahle and Seymour Hersch, but someone's mother was a good one, too. My first thoughts were of Charles Willeford and Garth Hudson, both apropros of nothing. Or Henry Miller or maybe Harry Smith. Then Paul mentioned Simon Wagstaff, hero of Kilgore Trout's Venus on the Half Shell, a terrific little novel. That got me thinking as the turn went around the table. So when it came to me, I mentioned the author of Venus on the Half Shell, not Kilgore Trout, who is an invention of Kurt Vonnegut, but Philip Jose Farmer, who channeled Trout to write that book. It's been a while since I read any Farmer. But several of his books, including that one, I've enjoyed immensely. When I was in the 8th grade or so, I read the World of the Tiers books, and still remember them well. The Riverworld Series is very good (though the SciFi Network TV adaptation a few years ago was a disappointment). Jesus on Mars is a fine novel, that takes the title seriously. I mentioned at breakfast the more or less pornographic Tarzan pastiche, Lord of the Trees, and the wild, seriously twisted, Image of the Beast. Farmer is sort of known as the writer who first put sex in science fiction with his early story The Lovers. He may not be hero material (who is?) but he's written some challenging stuff that's worth reading.
11:58:59 AM
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But you have to admit, the people of Iraq are better off than they were under Saddam Hussein.
Yup. Just keep telling yourself that:
BAGHDAD, 18 August (IRIN) – A serious rise in food poisoning cases caused by expired and contaminated food in Iraq has been reported by the Ministry of Health.
“Government hospital directors have alerted our ministry that there is an increase in cases on a daily basis, especially in children, caused by poor food quality in the markets,” to Mustafa al-Aani, a senior official at the ministry said.
Muhammad Shambar, a Baghdad doctor, said initial symptoms for the food poisoning are characterised by intense diarrhoea and constant vomiting. He added that urgent action should be taken by the patient before dehydration sets in.
(Via Suburban Guerrilla.)
8:08:49 AM
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© Copyright 2005 Steve Michel.
Last update: 9/2/2005; 10:19:08 AM.
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