Correspondence

...Parental investment theory makes specific predictions about the divergent conditions under which parents will— and will not—be motivated to care for offspring...

...In this new article, he speaks again of human beings as freely choosing "selves...

...Witness religion created by and for man to bring our psyche to a higher plane of existence...

...Well done as it was, however, the piece falters, perhaps owing to its intended audience, when it comes to lay blame...

...First, sociobiology and evolutionary psychology are not one and the same— there are key scientific differences that led us to call the new field something other than cognitive science, sociobiolo-gy, anthropology, or even ethology...

...one might as well say that physics is circular because it can explain why a ball sometimes goes up and sometimes comes down...

...Which is to say, in plain English, it is a circular argument and therefore invalid...

...JOHN C. DONNELLY Palm Beach Shores, FL IF ANDREW FERGUSON is accurately portraying evolutionary psychology, then this country is in worse shape than I had imagined...

...Your article was an interesting and informative read, particularly for those who may have been duped into believing that sociobiology is not a religious quest...

...Ferguson should examine the evidence before pronouncing it nonexistent for ideological reasons...

...DONALD J. KECK Powder Springs, GA SUCH DEVOTION TO A BELIEF is truly remarkable on the part of evolutionary sociobiologists...

...Like other faiths, it begins with a few uncertain facts upon which it constructs a vast theology that is both self-sustaining and unquestionable to its believers...

...JOE SCHWARTZ Washington, DC ANDREW FERGUSON'S article demonstrates one thing with great clarity: Darwinism, whether of the right- or left-wing variety, has long since left the realm of science and has become a religious faith—with its own true believers, heretics, and self-proclaimed orthodox interpreters...

...In his WEEKLY STANDARD article a few years ago on Francis Fukuyama, Ferguson argued that human beings are "autonomous selves" who exercise "free will" beyond the constraints of human nature...

...culture and genetics may both sometimes play a role—it is only our desire for the cause that forces a misguided pick of one or the other approach...

...Basing a way of life, political views, and life decisions on evolutionary psychology is a great waste of time...

...Moreover, he states his agreement with Richard Dawkins, who insists that what is the case must be separated from what ought to be...

...second, the claim that evolutionary psychology is about "genetic" explanations, whereas other psychological and cultural theories are not, is just wrong...

...I believe it is most likely that culture determines far more aspects of human behavior than does genetics, and I am admittedly more comfortable living with this perspective than with that of sociobiology, which would assign immutable causes to the bulk of my behaviors (and, thus, to my range of possibility for different behaviors...

...But i do not understand his alternative...

...If Ferguson accepts this is/ought dichotomy, then how can he recommend that conservative moral reasoning be founded on "empirical grounds...

...What I find most intriguing is the amount of speculation, faulty logic, and circular reasoning that inhabits the many diatribes Ferguson details...

...His reasoning is confusing ("Evolutionary Psychology and Its True Believers," March 19...

...These are supposed to be scientists...

...Ferguson acknowledges as much when he takes to task the many conservatives who embrace this Social Darwinism recidivus, but balks at naming the reason for its second coming...

...And if so, how is that possible...

...Notions of monolithic causality should be suspect...

...Or does the freedom of these "selves" require that they be disembodied...

...Religion had to be explained as a material process, from the bottom up, atoms to genes to the human spirit...

...A biological explanation of human nature does not deny human freedom rightly understood if we define freedom as the capacity for acting as one desires...

...The arguments Ferguson hurls at evolutionary psychologists—that they rely on assumptions and speculations about a long gone era, and that their theories cannot be scientifically estab-lished—apply equally to the Darwin enterprise...

...It's a way to justify some personal views, such as Peter Singer's, that are viewed as abhorrent by regular people...

...The faith that most evolutionists have in Darwinian theory goes far beyond the faith that I have in my God...

...Did I miss something here...

...MICHAEL STEWART Arlington, VA THE WEEKLY STANDARD'S cover story on evolutionary psychology was so uninformed that it is useless as a portrayal of evolutionary psychology or the issues it raises...

...I understand that Ferguson rejects this...

...LEDA COSMIDES, JOHN TOOBY University of California, Santa Barbara THANK YOU for Andrew Ferguson's much-needed review of evolutionary psychology...

...Many things useful to guiding research about the human mind are known with near certainty about our evolutionary past (there were two sexes, women became pregnant and nursed, humans hunted, children had to be fed, salt availability was limited, etc...

...But then Ferguson admits that "nothing in sociobiology requires an acceptance of infanticide or euthanasia...

...Fourth, many scientists—astronomers, geologists, biologists, archaeologists—would be surprised by the claim that the past is unknowable...

...Ferguson's article illuminates another characteristic of our contemporary academic theologians: their constant resort to using obscure language to disguise what they are really saying, and to impress their fellow academics...

...But what of religion...

...If Ferguson is arguing for a complete separation between biological nature and human freedom, then I would reject this as a false dichotomy...

...Do these "selves" have bodies...

...complex human behaviors are, to use a term from cultural theory, "overdetermined," i.e., determined by a multiplicity of factors, not all of which are necessarily equal in force or impact...

...science" is a latin word meaning "knowledge," and "scientist" literally means "one who searches for truth...

...Third, the notion that a theory within evolutionary psychology is "circular" because it can explain both infanticide and a mother's love is ignorant about the very nature of science...

...Moreover, theories about selection pressures—such as sexual selection theory, which Ferguson mocks—have been vetted on data from thousands of animal species, and have become far more reliable than any competing theory yet developed in the social sciences...

...Ferguson quotes the following description of evolutionary psychology methodology penned by Barbara Herrnstein: "[it] is a process of self-enclosed speculation directed by a set of mutually determining, mutually validating assumptions, descriptions, and hypotheses . . . a virtual prescription for self-affirming circularity...

...In fact, from anthropology to sociology, the same criticisms apply to the validity of all so-called "social sciences...

...From the beginning I never could accept that science and religion are separate domains, with fundamentally different questions and answers...

...Religious stories of origin are not safe stories of the long-ago past, but function actively today to justify current cultural constructs and power inequities between groups...

...Richard Moore Tolland, CT In his overview on sociobiology and its critics, Ferguson writes that Edward O. Wilson "is emphatic that religion and science are incompatible, and that the practical achievements of science make religion intellectually untenable...

...In many ways, however, I'm not surprised...

...He doesn't explain what this means...

...Believing that human nature can be radically transformed by human will belongs to a tradition of leftist utopianism that conservatives should reject...

...PAUL PIGOTT Tallahassee, FL...

...In the case of evolutionary psychology, the standard etiology of cultural decay—it passes from the academic elite to the unsuspecting American—simply won't do...

...How, then, does he account for the following from Chapter 3 of Wilson's Naturalist: "Science became the new light and the way...

...Because the misunderstandings are pervasive, we will focus on just four points...

...Rather, it is the result of a triumphant free-market ideology eating itself...

...I have argued that Darwinian biology supports the conservative appeal to natural moral law as rooted in human biological nature...

...Sociobiology functions as a right-wing origin myth...

...LARRY ARNHART Northern Illinois University DeKalb, IL ANDREW FERGUSON shoots and scores with his article on sociobiology...

...When historians theorize about how some seemingly insignificant event influenced the course of history, their assumptions cannot be validated scientifically...

...all claims about the structure of human minds entail claims (tacit or not) about the genes and environments that interacted to build them...

...It seems that one should embrace truth, regardless of where it leads...

...All theories about human behavior rely on claims about the human mind...

...I don't share his respect for singer's intellect...

...The review of the genetic record results in the unmistakable conclusion that evolution is fact, and that as a result we are in some measure psychologically shaped by our genes, and the remainder (a considerable remainder) by our culture and environment...

...Is it not possible that Wilson, fully immersed as a youngster in the Southern Baptist tradition, and still leaking outward signs of faith (he wept during Martin Luther King Sr.'s service at Harvard's Memorial Church in 1984), may be a Christian in the sheep's clothing of a sociobiologist...

...Ferguson gives more attention to Peter singer than anyone else, apparently because he thinks singer correctly understands the moral and political consequences of Darwinian biology...

...When Darwin was describing a mechanized, brutally competitive state of affairs in the natural world, it was London, and not the Galapagos, that colored his picture...

...singer believes, with good reason," Ferguson writes, "that sociobiology validates his new non-speciesist understanding," which supports infanticide and euthanasia...

...And if so, does their embodied nature influence their choices...

...Rather than appealing to natural law or Darwinian science, he suggests conservatives should base their moral arguments on "empirical grounds...

...These predictions about parental psychology are eminently testable, and have been tested on humans and other species with great success...

...If Ferguson is defining "free will" as an uncaused cause, then the only "free will" is God's...

...It has not, as he implies, "gone straight [from the intellectual establishment] into the drinking water," and hence into our hearts and minds...