On Thu, 3 Nov 2005, andie nachgeborenen wrote:
> It's exactly what sociobiology -- indeed just plain
> biology -- would lead you expect. Wouldn't males
> males whow ere attracted to women who were in fact
> more fertile be more successful in propagating?
> Wouldn't, therefore, they be more likely to select for
> women who had apparant signs of fertility, thus making
> women who had those signs more likely to propagate?
Not quite that simple: reproductive success, as all serious evolutionary theorists contend, is more than just fertile women cranking out babies! For instance, a less fertile woman could have a higher level of reproductive success if she is a more effective caregiver and/or maintains strong social ties with others to create a support network that keeps the offspring alive. (Sarah Hrdy's work on this is good.) The crucial point here that sociobiology seems to mostly ignore is that reproductive success is about getting the offspring to reproductive age; it is not just about maximizing the number of pregnancies or even the number of live births.
The thing that disappoints me is that there is ample, rigorous work on evolutionary theory being done by biologists. This work is largely ignored by people who call themselves "evolutionary psychologists" or "sociobiologists".
Miles