Daniel Davies wrote:
>
> Date: Thu, 1 Aug 2002 00:45:15 -0700
> From: "Luke Weiger"
> Subject: Re: beauty
>
> >> But isn't beauty a function of class anyway?
>
> >Of evolution.
>
> Don't be silly.
The simple response probably to such silliness is that beauty isn't a trait, & only traits are inheritable. What we call beauty would be a more or less random assemblage of traits evolved quite independently of their relation ship to "beauty."
This is relevant to the thread on "experts." Free-floating intellectuals tend to set themselves up as "experts" in every domain; a blithe ignoring of actual expertise can lead, as dd says, to mere silliness.
Carrol
I'm absolutely agog to hear what kind of Just So Story you
> and the rest of the Dawkinsite gang are going to tell to explain how, to
> take a random example, standards of beauty take such radically different
> approaches to the question of underarm hair on adult women. And so on, and
> so on.
>
> People think that taking this sort of reductionist approach to complicated
> social questions makes them look all cool and clever and "hard sciencey".
> In actual fact, it just makes you look like you buy a lot of pop science
> books at airports.
>
> dd
>
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