Biology and Society (Re: [lbo-talk] Ward Churchill responds to U. of Colorado investigation]

Jerry Monaco monacojerry at gmail.com
Tue May 30 12:26:17 PDT 2006



>
> BTW, at the risk of resurrecting the ghost of Singers past, the man
> (Singer) published an interesting book recently regarding how the left
> can reclaim Darwin. A better guide, I would argue, for leftists, than an
> American Enterprise Institute speaker (Pinker) and Summers apologist.
>
> --ravi

Ravi is mostly correct, even though he might be surprised to hear me say it, since I am very sympathetic to such attempts as evolutionary psychology and sociobiology. It is hard to see that they have a viable theory except perhaps when they write about the social insects or are making comments about reproductive "strategies" in general.

Besides Jerry Fodor in LRB I would also like to recommend Allen Orr's critiques of "fundamentalist" adaptationism in the Boston Review of Books.

Orr often gets his hook into the instability in the thinking of Dennet, Pinker, Wilson, Dawkins, and the crowd.

Jerry

-- Jerry Monaco's Philosophy, Politics, Culture Weblog is Shandean Postscripts to Politics, Philosophy, and Culture http://monacojerry.livejournal.com/

His fiction, poetry, weblog is Hopeful Monsters: Fiction, Poetry, Memories http://www.livejournal.com/users/jerrymonaco/

Notes, Quotes, Images - From some of my reading and browsing http://www.livejournal.com/community/jerry_quotes/



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