It's like trying to study astronomy outside the context of physics in the year 1600. At the time, people who tried to study astronomy inside the context of physics were coming up with explanations involving crystal spheres for the planets, and the fixed stars staying up because the element of fire naturally seeks its place above the element of air. By contrast, Kepler, who was studying astronomy outside the context of physics, discovered extremely accurate heliocentric numerical approximations to the paths of the planets, which eventually formed the basis for Newton's work.
The trouble with evolutionary psychology today is that, as far as I can tell, our theory of evolution is not yet capable of making the kinds of quantitative predictions that Newton's theory of physics makes, at least in the realm of psychology. (It does make some kinds of quantitative predictions about differences in genotypes, but cannot generally extend them to phenotypic variation; counterexamples are welcome.) As a result, one can usually find plausible ev-psych explanations both for an actually observed phenomenon (say, a gender difference or gender similarity) and for its exact opposite, rendering the theory of no predictive value.
I'm a little reluctant to post this, because I'm aware that the same criticism could be leveled at quantum physics as it's presented in pop-science treatments, and my knowledge of ev-psych is mostly drawn from similarly nonrigorous explanations. The difference is that, as far as I can tell, there isn't a corresponding more-rigorous ev-psych literature that the fluffy treatments are covering up.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2008-08-17 07:18 pm (UTC)The trouble with evolutionary psychology today is that, as far as I can tell, our theory of evolution is not yet capable of making the kinds of quantitative predictions that Newton's theory of physics makes, at least in the realm of psychology. (It does make some kinds of quantitative predictions about differences in genotypes, but cannot generally extend them to phenotypic variation; counterexamples are welcome.) As a result, one can usually find plausible ev-psych explanations both for an actually observed phenomenon (say, a gender difference or gender similarity) and for its exact opposite, rendering the theory of no predictive value.
I'm a little reluctant to post this, because I'm aware that the same criticism could be leveled at quantum physics as it's presented in pop-science treatments, and my knowledge of ev-psych is mostly drawn from similarly nonrigorous explanations. The difference is that, as far as I can tell, there isn't a corresponding more-rigorous ev-psych literature that the fluffy treatments are covering up.