9 - Evolutionary Psychology: The Burdens of Proof

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Richard C. Lewontin's interventions against the acceptance of speculative, untested, yet socially influential claims about human evolution – the most politically significant parts of “sociobiology” – stand as one the most important and controversial aspects of his career. The criticisms expressed in his papers on adaptation (Lewontin 1978, 1985), and in the famous paper he coauthored with Stephen Jay Gould (Gould and Lewontin 1979), have spurred methodological self-awareness about claiming adaptation in many quarters. Although Lewontin's papers have attained the status of obligatory citations, this does not mean that their critical conclusions have been fully absorbed. Indeed, there are recent authors who present G. C. Williams's 1966 book – which was, after all, about the high standards that must be enforced in order to claim an evolutionary adaptation – and Gould and Lewontin's 1979 paper – which embodied an insistence on the high standards that must be enforced in order to claim an evolutionary adaptation – as being on opposite sides of the fence with regard to evolutionary adaptation (Cosmides and Tooby 1995, p. 7l; Pinker and Bloom 1992, p. 454).

Chief among those who claim to live in a post-Lewontinian age of adaptationism – one in which an enlightened and modest approach to adaptation is practiced, and the strict standards of scientific evidence enthusiastically adhered to – are those practicing what they call “evolutionary psychology,” most prominently, Leda Cosmides and John Tooby.