Nicholas Wright Gillham. A Life of Sir Francis Galton: From African Exploration to the Birth of Eugenics. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. 416 pp. $35.00 (cloth). ISBN 0-19-514365-5.. Gerald Sweeney. “Fighting for the Good Cause”: Reflections on Francis Galton's Legacy to American Hereditarian Psychology. Independence Square, PA: American Philosophical Society, 2001. 136 pp. $18.00 (paper). ISBN 0-87169-912-5.

✍ Scribed by Michael J. Root

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2003
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 249 KB
• Volume: 39
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0022-5061
• DOI: 10.1002/jhbs.10143

✦ Synopsis

One of the most remarkable developments in psychology in the last decade has certainly been the efflorescence of popular evolutionary psychology. From Robert Wright to Matt Ridley, from David Buss to David Barash, the number of books purporting to show that humans possess a genetically based, naturally selected, universally shared "nature" has burgeoned. Steven Pinker's The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature is only the latest addition to a long line that ultimately reaches back to Darwin's 1871 Descent of Man. The Blank Slate thus contains nothing new: all of the arguments found here repeat arguments that Pinker himself and others have made elsewhere. What is new about his book is its peculiarly petulant and cranky tone-it is essentially one long screed against what Pinker deems the "modern denial of human nature" by a heterogeneous assortment of relativistic doctrines and traditions, including modernist and postmodernist art and literature, social constructionism, science studies, cultural studies, critical theory, and deconstruction. In their relativism, these areas of study have, according to Pinker, not only denied that there is any such thing as a universal human nature, they have also denied the possibility that truth, scientific or otherwise, can be separable from culture, values, and politics. One of Pinker's aims in arguing for evolutionary psychology is to argue for a restoration of the distinction between science and politics, fact and value. "The key," he tells us, to dispel fears of evolutionary psychology, "is to distinguish biological facts from human values" (p. 152).

But this is a distinction that Pinker often blurs. A major assertion here is that evolutionary psychology does actually support humane values and social and moral progress-much more so than its enemies have recognized-while the blank slate has historically been put to pernicious political ends by dictators and social engineers. This difference in the political uses of the competing theories Pinker offers as a key reason that liberals and feminists should embrace evolutionary psychology. But are we then evaluating evolutionary psychology on the basis of the facts, or on the moral message that supposedly stems from those facts? One cannot purport to judge two theories on their scientific merit alone, and then turn around and say, better values flow from this one. Let us not be fooled by Pinker's claim that he is coolly detaching the moral doctrines from the scientific ones. Like all popular evolutionary psychology, Pinker's argument is political, passionate, and thoroughly value laden.

The book falls into three parts. The first describes the doctrine of the blank slate and associated notions: that humans are basically born good and later corrupted by society (the "Noble Savage"), and that an immaterial soul separate from our biology is responsible for our behavior (the "Ghost in the Machine"). Pinker argues that these beliefs are more fallacious and more dangerous than the idea of an innately designed mind. The second part debunks the fears that many people have of accepting evolutionary psychology: that it will deprive us of free will, moral responsibility, and purpose in life, and will condone sexism and racism. And the third deals with the various "hot button" issues that have become the hallmark of popular evolutionary psychology, among them gender differences, innate aggression, and the corrosive effects of postmodernism.

Because so many of his arguments are so familiar, the criticisms against them can also be recycled. The critiques brought by Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Lewontin in the late Wright, R. (1995). The moral animal: Why we are the way we are. The new science of evolutionary psychology. New York: Vintage.