This article is a summary of an email discussion I had on the World in Common yahoo forum (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/worldincommon/) in April 2010. It is a reply to an article posted as a link to defend a contributor’s argument that human behaviour “is social, not biological”.

The article I am replying to can be found here:

http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/jan01/epbook.html

A conspiracy of scientists?

I find it difficult to accept that there is a big conspiracy of scientists who have gone to the trouble of starting up whole new areas and disciplines of science, just so that they can underpin the continuing reign of the capitalist class. It would not be so far-fetched, if we were in a situation where the ruling class was threatened by an upsurge in socialist understanding and unrest – but we are far away from that situation.

Apart from evolutionary psychology, there are other theories that are also interested in the biology of human behaviour; e.g., behavioural ecologists and developmental psychobiologists – and probably many others that I have never heard of.  Have all these disciplines of thought and different research methods started up so that they can strengthen the ideology of the ruling class?

As usual in science, all of these disciplines criticise each other. One such criticism of evolutionary psychology is that the research methods used are those from psychology; i.e., that the “evolutionary” part of the term isn’t represented in the research. Other debates centre on the “Massive Modularity Hypothesis”, defended by evolutionary psychologists – that our (whole) cognitive architecture is composed of computational devices, that are innate as well as adaptations.  Others hold with the modularity theory, but differ on the extent of modularity in the brain.

Other debates still are about whether or not the brain is a general problem solving device – whereas evolutionary psychologists argue that there is neither enough time nor enough available information for any human to learn from scratch to solve all the problem they may come across in the world – i.e., we are back to specialised, innate modules.

In all of these debates, I cannot detect any whiff of consideration about (or interest in) whether or not a socialist society would be possible (not that these scientists would know what we mean by socialism anyway), given their particular theory.

Going back to the article I am replying to, “Evolutionary pseudo-psychology”, the author claims that “the people concerned” were not writing as “competent scientists but as ideologists serving privileged interests and/or pandering to popular prejudice”.  This is quite a huge claim to make.  Does it apply to, for example, Leda Cosmides and John Tooby as well – a couple who helped to pioneer the field of evolutionary psychology?  John Tooby has a PhD from Harvard University and Professor of Anthropology at the University of Santa Barbara, California.  His wife, Leda Cosmides, has a PhD in cognitive psychology from Harvard and is also a Professor at Santa Barbara.  It could be, of course, that all professors in all universities “have got it in for us” and are busily running around doing the dirty work of the capitalists, but somehow I think that to believe this is the case, smacks of a persecution complex.

In my opinion Buick’s article sets up some straw men which he then knocks down.  For example, to quote from his article:

“In fact the real scientific evidence proved the opposite: humans were of course the product of biological evolution but their particular evolutionary inheritance in the form of a complex brain allowed them to learn and live out a great variety of different behaviour patterns; one key feature of human biological nature was precisely this capacity for flexible behaviour, the capacity to adapt human behaviour to cope with the challenges presented by the natural and the social environments which humans had to live in. Humans can be competitive, aggressive, possessive, etc but we can also be—and are—co-operative, friendly and sharing. Groups of humans have lived in conditions of social equality in the past and so could do so again.”

This is an entirely reasonable view and one which I am sure the great majority of anybody working within areas of science where they look at biological origins of human behaviour would agree with.  Why Buick seems to think this view is somehow in opposition to evolutionary psychology (and similar theories) is a mystery to me.

The African savannah

The article claims that evolutionary psychology (EP) mainly considers life on the African savannah to have had an input into our innate behaviour.  This may or may not be Pinker’s view, but it’s by no means the view of everyone in EP.  For example, Cosmides and Tooby are positing a much more flexible and also a longer time span for this input:

“Although the hominid line is thought to have evolved on the African savannahs, the environment of evolutionary adaptedness, or EEA, is not a place or time. It is the statistical composite of selection pressures that caused the design of an adaptation. Thus the EEA for one adaptation may be different from that for another. Conditions of terrestrial illumination, which form (part of) the EEA for the vertebrate eye, remained relatively constant for hundreds of millions of years (until the invention of the incandescent bulb); in contrast, the EEA that selected for mechanisms that cause human males to provision their offspring -- a situation that departs from the typical mammalian pattern -- appears to be only about two million years old.” (http://www.psych.ucsb.edu/research/cep/primer.html)

Epigenesis

Buick says that: “We also know, thanks to recent advances in genetics and neuroscience, that some capacities (such as the ability to distinguish faces or to tell distance and perspective) correspond to certain parts of the brain. It is this that the evolutionary psychologists—and others who believe that complex behaviour patterns are innate and that there is, for instance, a gene for aggression or for homosexuality—latch on to, but what they ignore is that the brain is not fully "wired up" (to use one of their favourite metaphors) at birth but that this "wiring up" is a process that takes place as we grow up and learn and in fact continues throughout our lives. We are not born with pre-programmed patterns of behaviour. We learn how to behave after we are born (indeed, this starts while we are still in the womb) and in so doing "programme" or "wire up", or whatever metaphor you want to use, our brains. We are animals that are capable of adopting a great variety of behaviour patterns. The nature of our brain allows us, as participants in a particular system of society, to "programme" ourselves, in ways that neuroscience is beginning to understand in more detail, for living in that society.”

No reputable scientist working in this field would claim that there is “a gene” for aggression or for homosexuality.  There may be a collection of genes contributing to certain states of the mind or behaviours.

For, say, Down syndrome there is an unmistakable chromosomal, i.e., genetic explanation for the condition.  This is built in, “pre-programmed”, if you like.  This does not mean that the world gives up on children with Down’s – “they’ve got Down’s, there is nothing more we can do”.  If they are born or adopted into loving families, both the families themselves, as well as the education system (if they are lucky), do the best they can to educate them and ensure that they have a good life.

The same goes for autism.  Like Down’s, if you’ve got it, you’ve got this condition for life.  But with the right environment, many with this condition go on to achieve great things. (Many believe Einstein had Asperger’s , a form of autism.)

The process of continuous “wiring up” that Buick talks about, may be the interesting phenomenon of epigenesis.  The following example is taken from Christopher Badcock’s book, “Evolutionary Psychology – A Critical Introduction”.  The example is that of epigenesis in the immune system.  It is a bit long, but well worth reading through, as it gives a very good example of what I think Buick may be alluding to above:

“Surprising as it may seem to those who take the view that DNA is a complete genetic blueprint for the organism, many genes that play a critical role in keeping us alive are not present when we are conceived, or even when we are born.  And contrary to those who see genes as rigidly fixed and limited by the evolutionary past, the fact is that the human genome can generate a practically infinite number of gene products when it needs them.  Indeed, were it not so, no human being would survive infancy’ let alone reach adulthood.

Large, long-lived creatures like human beings need defences against the threat posed by many much smaller, more numerous and more quickly reproducing organisms that would like to exploit them.  There are believed to be anything up to a million species of bacteria, and at least 5,000 viruses, many with generation spans as short as 20 minutes.  Protection against this threat is the function of the immune system.  Its purpose is to detect and destroy diseases, parasites and infections of all kinds – what we might collectively call *antigens*.  These are countered by *antibodies*, specially manufactured proteins that bind to antigens and thereby label and disable them.  The problem for the genes of the immune system is that they have to generate antibodies to fight antigens which might not have existed at the time the individual was conceived and which can evolve rapidly within an individual’s lifetime.

But what preformation can’t achieve, epigenesis can.  What happens is this: antibodies are composed essentially of two principal parts – a constant region common to all, and two variable ones, producing a characteristic ‘Y’ shape.  On each of one pair of chromosomes in a fertilized egg there are about 300 gene segments that code for the variable region of an antibody.  Some considerable distance away on the same chromosome there are some further short segments that contain more code for the variable region.  Somewhat further still, the constant region is coded, along with a terminal part.  As cells of the immune system mature, the DNA coding for the variable regions is randomly combined and mutated with that for the constant region and the terminus.  As a result, new genes are produced which were not present in the original genome.  A nearby regulatory sequence turns on the newly created gene, which is then expressed, producing a unique antibody.  There are five regions of the second set of variable segments, which, with the 300 in the first set, can produce up to 1,500 different genes.  However, this number is vastly increased by the fact that joining of the randomly chosen segment is itself highly variable, so that ultimately as many as 100 billion different antibodies can be formed in as many different immune system cells (Berg and Singer 1992).

Today it is believed that humans have in the order of 100,000 functional genes.  If each antibody needed its own gene, and if 100 billion is the right kind of figure for the number of different antibodies that could in principle be made, then clearly human beings would have to have a million more genes than they do.  In other words, if every antibody that we could produce was blueprinted by human genes, people would need not just 46, but 46 million chromosomes in each one of their cells!  But in reality only 300 or so DNA segments are required, all of them located on a single chromosome.  This is an example of epigensis, not preformation.”

Has human evolution stopped?

Buick says: “Even Steven Rose himself questions the reasonable assumption—in fact the only reasonable assumption of evolutionary psychology—that humans won't have changed genetically since we modern humans first evolved some 100,000 years ago.”

I’m with Steve Rose on this one!  Why would human evolution have suddenly stopped 100,000 years ago? There are at least a couple of reasons I can think of as to why this probably isn’t so.

The first is that different human blood groups confer resistance to various diseases.  This is a reaction to disease epidemics people suffered in RECENT HISTORY:

http://www.eupedia.com/forum/showthread.php?t=25371

The second is people’s ability to digest milk and milk products.  About 75% of the world’s (adult) population cannot drink a lot of milk.  Scientists believe this is because only people who herded cattle and started drinking cow’s milk, developed the ability to digest lactose.  See, for example:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/10/science/10cnd-evolve.html

The materialist conception of history

Buick says:“For instance, the first contributor merely criticises the form in which evolutionary psychologists present their arguments while the second (a raving postmodernist) criticises not just biological determinism but all determinisms including therefore social determinisms such as the materialist conception of history.”

Not everybody views the materialist conception of history as being deterministic; this ought to have been honestly acknowledged in the article.

Summary

With the current rapid gains in knowledge within genetics, biology and all their sub-branches, I think it behoves anyone outside these sciences (and even within them) to exercise caution with claims in any direction.

I for one would not like to pass judgement on who is and who isn’t a “competent” scientist in these fields.

TB

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