We have administered the Reiss Profile of Fundamental Motives to some junior
high school students threatening violence, including one 13 year-old boy who
developed written plans to bomb his school.  What is new about this asessment
is that Reiss Profile measures motives, nearly all believed to have a
significant genetic component.

The 13 year-old who planned on bombing his school scored 2 s.d.'s above the
norm for venegance.  Since venagenace was his greatest value, we interpret
this to mean that he was prepared to spend significant time and enegy to get
back at people who bullied or taunted him.

The boy also scored very high for status.  Status is psychometrically linked
to attention, because both status and attention convey a sense of importance
of self.  The boy was highly motivated to draw attention to himself.

The usual inhibitors of violence were weak.  Honor is the motive that links
children to their heritage, including traditional codes of morality.  This
boy scored very low on honor.  He did not care about right versus wrong; he
had no conscience, so to speak.

Idealism (also called citizenship) is the motive that links children to the
community.  This motive is psychometrically independent of honor.  This boy
scored low on citizenship.  He was disconnected from parents and from
community because he lacked the motives needs to value these connections.
(We assume these motives have a significant genetic basis.)

The boy was a bit of a coward.  He scored high for tranquility.  More than
his peers, he was motivated to avoid stress and prone to develop fear or
experinece panic.  He may have chosen to bomb his school, rather than to
attack with a gun, because a bomb planted hours ahead of time poses less
personal danger.

A second boy, 14 years old, was tested.  He showed similar motives -- very
high on veneagnce and status, very low on honor and citizenship/idealism.
This boy, however, scored low for tranquility.  He experienced stress as
excitement to be sought after rather than as a sign of danger to be avoided.
He was fearless.  He drove his parent's car into a tree.

The motivational profiles may show us how violent prone boys develop
different values and motives than those who are not violent prone.  To the
extent to which these motivational traits are genetically determined (they
are universal and have significant survival value), the initial testings are
consistent with the hypothesis that the children showing school violence have
different natures than their nonviolent peers.

Psychometric research can help identify how elemental desires and instinctual
needs (automatically triggerred motives) are related to each other.  When
biologists describe animal behavior, for example, they make many errors
because they presume that unrelated behaviors are related.  A good example is
the assumption that prayer in humans is related to submissive behavior.  This
cannot possibly be valid because the strength of the motive to pray is
uncorrelated with the strength of the motive to submit to secular authority.
By making use of psychometrics, psychologists can contribute significantly to
evoluationary science.

Steven Reiss
Professor of Psychology & Psychiatry

In a message dated 3/31/01 1:07:19 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
hgintis@... writes:

<<   Well, I spend much of my research time documenting and exploring
  the idea that prosociality is built into our genetic makeup. Prosociality
  includes empathy for others, various forms of reciprocity,
  non-self-regarding behavior, shame and guilt, and a spontaneous propensity
  to contribute to collective projects. The evidence is certainly not all in,
  but I believe that future research will confirm the deep prosociality of
  human nature.
           Of course, our species also harbors an immense capacity for evil
  as well as good, and this also is almost certainly built into our genetic
  makeup. I also work on this side of the problem, including insider/outsider
  discrimination, vengeance, self-centeredness, and other such behaviors.
           But Christians also believe that humans have a propensity for both
  good and evil, so the fact that evolutionary and behavioral research
  recognizes both good and evil in human nature should not be a problem for
  Christians.
           Ev psychers have historically held a much weaker position---that
  "is" and "ought" are totally separate categories, and we can have a
  morality that is not related in any deep way to our genetic makeup, the
  latter being basically selfish and egotistical. This is a totally
  incoherent and unconvincing position, I believe, and it is not surprising
  that religious types have rejected it.         Of course, morality does not
  reduce to genetic structure because (a) a wide variety of cultural
  practices and hence moralities are compatible with being human, and (b) we
  can reason in ways that lead us to accept moral precepts that are
  fundamentally epigenetic (e.g., having sympathy for the suffering of
  animals, or a deep love of God).
>>>
   I think there is significant potential for confusion here. I don't think
the fundamental clash here is whether or not an evolutionary perspective
suggests that humans have a strong capacity for altruism, although I agree
with Herb that many people have argued this point. I also agree with Herb
that humans have a huge capacity for altruistic behavior that is both genetic
and epigenetic in nature.
   No, the problem as I see it is that everything is morally neutral from a
purely scientific perspective. The fundamental task of science is simply to
develop a mathematical description of change (or behavior or energy
transfer). And these pure descriptions are void of values like "good" and
"evil". Good is simply defined as the smallest theory that accounts for the
most amount of variance. To suggest that we can scientifically "discover"
that human nature is good (or evil) is to fundamentally confuse our
subjective behavioral value system with a scientific one.
   My humanistic side is glad that we are documenting that humans have high
levels of potential for self-sacrificing behavior and we may well be able to
use such information to structure human societies in a way that I think would
be very beneficial. But altruism and self-centeredness (and whatever else)
looks the same from a scientific perspective. They are behaviors in the
unfolding wave of causality.

____

From: coachhenri@...
Date: Sun Apr 1, 2001 10:43am
Subject: Re: [evol-psych] Evolutionary theory promotes, not opposes, human
morality

My humanistic side is glad that we are documenting that humans have high levels
of potential for self-sacrificing behavior and we may well be able to   use
such information to structure human societies in a way that I think would   be
very beneficial. But altruism and self-centeredness (and whatever else)   looks
the same from a scientific perspective. They are behaviors in the   unfolding
wave of causality.

Gregg Henriques, PhD
University of Pennsylvania

...  No, the problem as I see it is that everything is morally neutral from a
purely scientific perspective. The fundamental task of science is simply to
develop a mathematical description of change (or behavior or energy
transfer). And these pure descriptions are void of values like "good" and
"evil". Good is simply defined as the smallest theory that accounts for the
most amount of variance. To suggest that we can scientifically "discover"
that human nature is good (or evil) is to fundamentally confuse our
subjective behavioral value system with a scientific one.

In a message dated 4/1/01 10:10:27 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
hgintis@... writes:

           My point is that there are certain moral universals (see, for
  instance, Donald E. Brown, Human Universals) and we can discover that there
  are genetic and epigenetic bases for these universals. Since scientists are
  human, and participates in this system, we can say that we have "discovered
  good and evil" scientifically.
           I don't know why you say everything is morally neutral from a
  scientific perspective. For me, virtually everything is morally charged
  from my scientific perspective. The fact that I try to evaluate the truth
  of statements independent from their moral import doesn't mean I don't
  recognize their moral import.
   >>

My point is that science does not tell you that altruism is good and
self-centeredness is evil. That is what I mean by things being morally
neutral from a pure science perspective. Instead, science can help us
understand why groups will consistently punish self-centered behavior and
reward altruistic behavior. (I like Brown's book. I also think Ridley's
Origins of Virtue is a good work). Science tells us that human behavior is
based at least in part on linguistic rules in which some behaviors are
justifiable and other behaviors are not. Science can also tell us why
particular types of behaviors tend to be judged by groups as justifiable, but
other behaviors are not. However, I do not see this to be the same as
"discovering good and evil scientifically". We must ultimately choose our
value system. We cannot discover it using science. (Of course, we can and I
believe we should have our value system be informed by science, as science
will tell us both why things are and how things can be.)

Best,
Gregg Henriques

Indeed, one cannot use science to discover that anything is good or evil and
that is what I mean by science being neutral.

Dear Herb,

I am not quite sure that I agree with you. You wrote:

>===== Original Message From Herbert Gintis <hgintis@...> =====
>Ev psychers have historically held a much weaker position---that
>"is" and "ought" are totally separate categories, and we can have a
>morality that is not related in any deep way to our genetic makeup, the
>latter being basically selfish and egotistical. This is a totally
>incoherent and unconvincing position, I believe, and it is not surprising
>that religious types have rejected it.

William M. Brown responds:

I am not sure what you mean by "deep way". In any event George C. Williams
(1998) and William D. Hamilton supported the above position in a slightly
different form.  Williams (1998) "The Pony Fish's Glow : And Other Clues to
Plan and Purpose in Nature" argues that nature is fundamentally selfish. And
therefore designing an ethical system for humans based on what is best for
nature is counter-productive for human society. For example, under some
conditions incest is evolutionarily advantageous (i.e. depending upon
relatedness asymmetries). However, I doubt that adopting an ethical system
suggesting "incest is good" would be tolerable to most people (perhaps for
adaptive reasons). On a related note Houston & Hamilton (1989: Behavioral and
Brain Sciences 12 (4): 709-710) made the excellent point that selfish gene or
inclusive fitness theory says nothing about rationality, ethics and
psychological mechanisms.  Confusing the levels of selection, timeframe and
proximate/ultimate distinctions could have a negative impact on any ethical
system designed by humans for humans based on our present biological
understanding.

>===== Original Message From Herbert Gintis <hgintis@...> =====
>Of course, morality does not
>reduce to genetic structure because (a) a wide variety of cultural
>practices and hence moralities are compatible with being human, and (b) we
>can reason in ways that lead us to accept moral precepts that are
>fundamentally epigenetic (e.g., having sympathy for the suffering of
>animals, or a deep love of God).

William responds:

I think all moral systems (and behaviours) in animals can be reduced to
evolutionary genetics but not entirely explained by it of course (e.g.
ontogeny, phylogeny, and proximate mechanisms are likely involved). As for
your point made in (a), I am not sure why a "wide variety" of moral systems
precludes genes or "genetic structures" influencing ontogeny of brain and
cognitive components needed for cultural information transmission and
acquisition? It seems to me that information transmittal and pick-up
capacities necessary to adopt (or be manipulated by) a variety of cultural
systems must have specific genes underlying it [see Rice, W.R. & Holland, B.
(1997). The enemies within: intergenomic conflict, interlocus contest
evolution (ICE), and intraspecific Red Queen.  Behavioral Ecology and
Sociobiology, 41, 1-10]. All moral systems likely have an epigenetic component
- especially the ones that are adaptive.

Best regards,
William

William Michael Brown
Department of Psychology
Life Sciences Centre
Dalhousie University
1355 Oxford Street
Halifax, Nova Scotia
B3H 4J1 Canada

Ev psychers have historically held a much weaker position---that "is" and "ought" are totally separate categories, and we can have a morality that is not related in any deep way to our genetic makeup, the latter being basically selfish and egotistical.  This is a totally incoherent and unconvincing position, I believe, and it is not surprising that religious types have rejected it.
 

It’s true that some Darwinists have made famous, confusing comments about the need to rebel against our genes in order to be moral (J. Huxley, R. Dawkins), but many prominent Darwinists (including Darwin himself) have devoted whole books, chapters or articles to the opposing view, e.g. E. O. Wilson (see his online piece at http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/98apr/biomoral.htm), R. Alexander, M. Ruse, D. Dennett and W. Irons (and R. Wright, more or less).  Many others have approached the subject in a more indirect way, e.g. Daly & Wilson discuss how moral attitudes with regard to homicide are influenced by biology, Tooby & Cosmides discuss the machinery underlying disapproval of social contract violation, etc.

And yes, most Darwinists distinguish “is” from “ought.”  They do so simply to emphasize that explaining a behavior in light of ev theory doesn’t “justify” the behavior.  I don’t see any other defensible position here, unless you want make an absurd argument like that Tooby & Cosmides are trying to promote cheater detection, or that Thornhill & Palmer are adovocating rape.  Of course, for reasons I don’t completely understand, many people do assume that ev psych explanations of objectionable behaviors are “justifications” for the behaviors.  Such assumptions have been damaging to ev psych.
 

Well, I spend much of my research time documenting and exploring the idea that prosociality is built into our genetic makeup. Prosociality includes empathy for others, various forms of reciprocity, non-self-regarding behavior, shame and guilt, and a spontaneous propensity to contribute to collective projects. The evidence is certainly not all in, but I believe that future research will confirm the deep prosociality of human nature.
 

I’m the first to agree that many moral rules seem to be produced by a species-typical psychology, and that these rules are interpretable in light of ev theory.  But again, so is most human behavior, and saying that a behavior (moral, immoral or otherwise) is consistent with ev theory doesn’t give anyone a reason why they ought to act in that way.

And while ev psych can explain something about the structure of moral systems, it explains less about their content.  E.g., ev psych may reveal species-typical mechanisms related to collective action participation (such as those causing participants to feel punitive towards free riders, or those causing free riders to feel anxious about being punished), but it won’t tell you if the purpose of any particular collective action (whether it be to help your neighbors or to kill your neighbors) is itself morally good, or whether it is something you should participate in.  And creationists, I’m afraid, aren’t really interested in understanding the structure of their moral system, they just want justification for its content.  They don’t care if reciprocity is a human universal, they want reasons to believe that adultery, murder, etc. are sins.  And they think that creationism provides these reasons, and that evolutionism negates them.  Regardless of what evolutionists think about ev theory’s implications for morality, creationists (and many non-creationists as well) are convinced that ev theory threatens the content of their moral system.  This is a serious PR problem for ev theory, something it will have to overcome in order to attain secure, widespread acceptance.  Too bad T. H. Huxley isn’t around – he was a genius at claiming the moral high ground in his advocacy of ev theory, always positioning himself as the truth-seeker: “The foundation of morality is to have done, once and for all, with lying.”
 

Michael Price
UCSB Anthropology

I see little point in a serious CONCEPTUAL analysis of the views of Creationists
versus Darwinians, on the assumption that the question concerns the "rational"
or cognitive content of the objections to human evolution.  The New York Times
recently reported the death of Joseph Campbell, President of the Flat Earth
Society.  His objections to the spherical earth and heliocentric view of the
solar system were based, according to statements (quoted in the TIMES), on a
combination of his interpretation of the Bible and his "eye witness" experience
that the earth :looked flat" out where he lived in the Southwest.

Evol. Psych. teaches us something about the relationship between the limbic
system (emotion) and the neo-cortex (cognition).  A rigid doctrine that flies in
the face of immense scientific evidence (and, even in science, a rigid rejection
of data and theories that are well established in another "FIELD" can be
explained easily enough.  Humans, like most non-human primates, often engage in
territorial defense.  My turf, YOU KEEP OUT.  Cognition?  True emotion as an
explanation.  It makes it easier to deal with your colleagues in the social
sciences (who might as well be in the flat earth society).

Example: school killers repeatedly "puzzle" the "expert" psychologists and
educators.  Of course, for a decade it has been shown that lead and other toxic
heavy metals (e.g., manganese) are likely to be elevated in the head hair of
hyperactive children and violent criminals.  DID ANYONE SUGGEST TESTING ANDY
WILLIAMS IN SANTEE CAL. FOR HEAVY METALS (head hair costs $30 a test).  Oh,
we're told, the methodology is not reliable.  Maybe so and maybe no, but in a
number of cases of mass murderers whose head hair WAS tested, the same pattern
of abnormallyh high levels of toxic metals occurs.

Usual explanations?  Weapons for sale?  But why do kids buy them: economics
teaches us to look at both supply AND demand.  Teasing a new kid in town (which
happened to Andy Williams?)  But aggessive/non-violent social responses to
outsiders are characteristic of nonhuman primates and most human groups.  So
isn't the question the loss of inhibition (note that lead downregulates
dopamine, which in turn in the neurotransmitter in inhibitory circuits in the
basal ganglia.

LETS GET REAL.  The social sciences are intellectually moribund and no one
challenges them with specific issues like this.  At least a criminologist has a
VERBAL  commitment to natural scientific findings.  Some of THEM  might actually
come around if (IF) the addition of evol. psych. perspectives did not chqallenge
their 'field" AND PROMISED TO THE FIRST TO JOMP ABORD THE POSSIB ILITY OF BETTER
EXPLANATIONS OF WHAT IS ACTUALLY OCCURRING.

   roger masters --- Herbert Gintis wrote:
At 08:53 AM 3/31/01 +0000, Michael Price wrote:
>One thing that hasn't been mentioned lately regarding creationists'
>objections to ev theory: they mainly object to it because they think
>it promotes immorality.  People who spend a lot of time trying to
>turn creationists into evolutionists, like Michael Shermer, report
>that the single biggest obstacle to this task is the creationist
>perception that if evolution is true, than the entire Christian moral
>foundation is undermined and there is no reason for anyone to be
>moral.  A recent quote by an Arkansas state house member - basically
>"if we tell kids they're descended from monkeys, then they'll act
>like they're descended from monkeys" - sums up the nature of
>creationist resistance.
>...
>I don't know what the solution is, but as long as people think of
>Darwinism as "advocating" amorality or immorality, I don't think
>there will be one.
          Well, I spend much of my research time documenting and exploring
the idea that prosociality is built into our genetic makeup. Prosociality
includes empathy for others, various forms of reciprocity,
non-self-regarding behavior, shame and guilt, and a spontaneous propensity
to contribute to collective projects. The evidence is certainly not all in,
but I believe that future research will confirm the deep prosociality of
human nature.
          Of course, our species also harbors an immense capacity for evil
as well as good, and this also is almost certainly built into our genetic
makeup. I also work on this side of the problem, including insider/outsider
discrimination, vengeance, self-centeredness, and other such behaviors.
          But Christians also believe that humans have a propensity for both
good and evil, so the fact that evolutionary and behavioral research
recognizes both good and evil in human nature should not be a problem for
Christians.
          Ev psychers have historically held a much weaker position---that
"is" and "ought" are totally separate categories, and we can have a
morality that is not related in any deep way to our genetic makeup, the
latter being basically selfish and egotistical. This is a totally
incoherent and unconvincing position, I believe, and it is not surprising
that religious types have rejected it.         Of course, morality does not
reduce to genetic structure because (a) a wide variety of cultural
practices and hence moralities are compatible with being human, and (b) we
can reason in ways that lead us to accept moral precepts that are
fundamentally epigenetic (e.g., having sympathy for the suffering of
animals, or a deep love of God).
          Morality, then, rests in our corporal being, rather than our
incorporeal soul (or perhaps, not only in our incorporeal soul, if you are
an agnostic).

Best Regards,

--- end of quote ---

>Applied Cognitive Psychology
>Volume 15, Issue 2, 2001. Pages: 187-203
>
>Telling and detecting lies in a high-stake situation: the case of a
>convicted
>murderer
>Aldert Vrij *, Samantha Mann
>University of Portsmouth, UK


There was a similar study involving police chiefs, probation officers,
parole agents, the FBI and the Secret Service.  The Secret Service were best
suited for discovering the liars since most of the "suspects" they interview
are telling the truth (drunks or the mentally-ill threatening the President
in public).  Only a small number of those interviewed actually lie about
their intentions; whereas the police, FBI and others in criminal justice
expect to be talking to liars, and usually are.  They therefore, don't
recognize truth-telling as often as the Secret Service.  Sorry I don't
remember the study; it was published about 8 years ago.

Michael Groom

In re to Politics of Reproductive Ritual, Paige and Paige

Dear Artemis...

Thanks for reminding me of this title.  I came across it during
my research for Saharasia, and it is one of many titles which
come to rather unclear and confusing conclusions based upon an
incomplete reviewing of the cross-cultural data.  They don't plot
the data geographically (on maps, that is), don't focus on
peaceful sex-positive cultures as a theoretical model of the
original and most natural form of human behavior, and so have
missed the Saharasian pattern in their own data.  Furthermore,
some of the variables used by Paige and Paige, and by others in
anthropology following the non-geographical cross-cultural
methodology, contain serious miscoding assumptions -- the
"segregation of adolescent boys" variable, for example, is widely
correlated with early weaning, polygamous factors, father
absence, and so forth. and all sorts of rather contorted and
overly-ambitious theories have been generated to explain those
correlations.  But the data base did not ever address the issue
of "female seclusion" or "purdah" as the Arabs call it.  Usually
boys and girls are segregated under the most extreme sex-
negative, patriarchal authoritarian societies, to keep them from
developing their own romantic bonds -- you have to do that, if
you want to keep your religions, class and caste systems going.

However, the coded data for cultures where "segregation of boys"
is absent or low makes no distinction between societies that
don't segregate boys because the girls are so tightly controlled
(puritanical Arab cultures, for example), as opposed to cultures
that don't segregate boys, as they have no taboos about boys and
girls sleeping together at all. I address this in Saharasia, but
the entire profession of anthropology is so allergic to
geographical methods, and to Reich, that my work won't become a
"classic" for at least another two generations.  Most of the
scholars who were tolerant of such ideas were purged from
American institutions of higher learning during the 80s and 90s,
with few remaining. Everything is PC now, and you can't be
critical of anyone's culture, even if the old men are buggering
their boys and cutting the throats of their girls for premarital
sex.  The patterns discussed in Paige and Paige are largely
illusions and their theories are top-heavy and fabricated.
Saharasia by contrast exists and is real, with a 98% predictive
power for all the known correlations within those same data
bases, and Reich's sex-economic theory remains the most valid and
accurate descriptor of human behavior and culture which holds
universal validity within this cross-cultural context.  If you
haven't read Saharasia, then you wouldn't know, of course.
http://www.orgonelab.org/xbjdemeo.htm

For the record, I was the first scholar to make global maps of
the large data bases of GP Murdock and R. Textor (same data used
by Paige & Paige), and got a Ph.D. for this work at the
University of Kansas.  No geographical journal would publish even
a summary article, and neither would the anthropology journals.
Even the journal Ethnology which had developed to present
materials which were developed out of the Murdock-Textor data
refused to even consider a paper.  That's how bad it is, and how
poisoned is the atmosphere in contemporary academe.  One
geographical journal reviewer actually said "I won't approve of
anything that's got Wilhelm Reich's name in it".  And so, I
joined the ranks of the many blacklisted American scholars.

Please do forward my email to the list where you got this
information, as maybe there's at least one individual who might
like to get the book.  I do give seminars on this subject, and
one is scheduled for this August.
http://www.orgonelab.org/d_events.htm

Kind Regards, James DeMeo, Ph.D. Orgone Biophysical Research Lab
PO Box 1148 Ashland, Oregon 97520 USA


>Greetings Dr. DeMeo,
> >I thought you'd find this information interesting.
> >Edward Hagen" <hagen@s...> >Date:  Thu Mar 29, 2001 6:23pm
>Subject:  The Politics of Reproductive Ritual
>
> >For those who are unfamiliar with it, The Politics of
>Reproductive >Ritual by Karen and Jeffery Paige is a classic.
This book >presents >and tests a 'grand theory' relating male
control of women and >children in small scale societies to
specific ecological >conditions. >Very briefly: the authors run a
large number of statistical tests

Herbert Gintis wrote:

>         I don't remember Paul's statement, but I certainly do know that the
> idea of a "natural order" in which there is a "male hierarchy which allocates
> resources" does not correspond at all to the facts. I assume "natural" is
> meant in the positive, as opposed to the ethical sense, because otherwise the
> assertion is not factual. In nature, there is no species that I know of in
> which there is a male hierarchy that allocates resources.
>         This has nothing to do with ev psych by the way. The assertion has to
> do with animal social organization and behavior.

In many animal species --- this includes herbivore mammals (=the horse, elks,
the "cow") birds (the fowl), and fishes (mollies, Xiphophorus, ...) --- males
will, under some circumstances, form small isosexual groups (all male) and
pacifically share the available resources and cooperate once a hierarchy has
been established among them. They form relatively stable dominance orders.
Females (with juveniles) also form small structured groups strongly organized
hierarchically. They "share" the available resources, whilst favouring their
relatives.

In males, as soon females are in sight (or introduced to them), intense
competition among them explodes, the result being that one of the males joins
the females, and excludes all other males from their proximity.

In the swordtail fish, the domestic fowl, the horse the alpha male of the
bachelor group usually becomes the male "left" with the females.

One male serving several females while keeping other males at bay is usually
called in the animal behavior literature a "harem".

The forces which keep a harem together vary among species:

The most general mechanism is that females show cohesion among themselves while
either i) tolerate the presence of the "male" which follows them and chases
other males approaching (as seen e.g. in Xiphophorus fish), or ii) prefer
(actively seek) the proximity and favour of the "male" (as seen in the fowl).
In some species, the "male" will actively round the females and keep them
as a small herd (as seen in horses and elks). It can be a mixture of all these
mechanisms.

In the species just mentioned (as well as in many others) females form strong
hierarchies even in the presence of males. As for males, as soon as females are
around they are rather intolerant of other males and act as despots apparently
to monopolize the female(s).

Recall that initial studies on dominance orders (Schjelderup-Ebbe, T. (1922a).
Beiträge zur Sozialpsychologie des Haushuhns. Z. Psychol., 88, 225-252.) were
descriptive of female behavior, not male.

Surely such a social scheme must not be generalized to all species, especially
to those forming stable couples... But couples could result from
female intolerance for other females in the presence of "their" male ... (as
observed in ducks, and geese).

Social organization based upon agonistic behavior (aggressive-menacing,
defensive-submissive-appeasing)  is a basic regularity found in the animal
world which merits to be qualified as a basic biological law. Even in couples
one pair-member can be shown to dominate the other.

Humans are no exceptions, though agonistic relations are most often quite
ritualized (not to say polite or civilized). However, in situations of intense
conflict for resources  (for children, house, spaces, grants, students,
publications, ... ) we definitively act as primates, and worse, as "humans"
(murder, war, ...).

Social dominance hierarchies may have no reality, but agonistic asymmetries (so
called dominance relationships) from which we construct/infer hierarchies
undeniably point to some reality.

And there is ample evidence that agonistic dominance serves priority of access
to the necessities of life (food, shelter, &c), especially when they are
scarce. It is also well established that in males competing for females, males
occupying the higher ranks of the hierarchy (constructed by us using agonistic
dominance asymmetries) father most of the children.

In females, preference for high raking males (unfamiliar ones) has been
experimentally shown in the fowl and surely in many other species, including
humans.

The term "resource" as used in the ecobiological literature has no pejorative
meaning. It simply points to things in the environment which can contribute to
increase individual fitness, and this includes reproductive partners.

The assertion that "male hierarchy would allocate resources" is thus certainly
a pure "vue de l'esprit" (a metaphor). The reality can be more simple. The
individual which is dominant within a pair has the possibility to obtain/keep
the resource when it needs it. And this applies to the (N*N-1)/2 possible pairs
in a group composed of N individuals unable to form coalitions.

However, as soon as animals can form coalitions resource allocation does not
depends solely upon individual properties.

Finally, Herbert Gintis wrote on the present topic: "This has nothing to do
with ev psych by the way. The assertion has to do with animal social
organization and behavior."

Unless I do not understand the context in which such a weird affirmation has
been written, it is clear for me that the questions related to social
organization in animals (even in chicken and fish) are of deep relevance for
the comprehension of human behavior, simply because we are animals and share
common ancestors. I do not see how evolutionary psychology could even exist
without considering the human species as part and issued of the animal kingdom.

Jacques Beaugrand

Michael Price wrote:
>
> One thing that hasn't been mentioned lately regarding creationists'
> objections to ev theory: they mainly object to it because they think
> it promotes immorality.  People who spend a lot of time trying to
> turn creationists into evolutionists, like Michael Shermer, report
> that the single biggest obstacle to this task is the creationist
> perception that if evolution is true, than the entire Christian moral
> foundation is undermined and there is no reason for anyone to be
> moral.  A recent quote by an Arkansas state house member - basically
> "if we tell kids they're descended from monkeys, then they'll act
> like they're descended from monkeys" - sums up the nature of
> creationist resistance.

This is true, but you ignore the reason it is true. Christians all over
the world (not to mention believers in other religions) can reconcile
their belief in a creator with evolution without worrying about
immorality flowing from evolution. Creationism is almost entirely an
American phenomenon (there are small numbers of creationists in
Australia, and an even smaller number in the UK, but they are
essentially politically powerless).

Christians have accepted the scientific facts that god doesn't make the
sun rise each morning, that god doesn't make the rain fall, that god
doesn't make flowers open in the morning and close at dusk, and all the
other conclusions of a scientific viewpoint. Why are they so hung up
over evolution causing immorality?

The Archbishop Spong claims that Christianity is in crisis, and that
many of those who profess to be christian are only so in name. Church
attendence is down. Of my own friends and family, I can't think of
anyone (other than myself) who would not claim to be a Christian, but
not one of them either goes to church or prays regularly. Churches are
finding it difficult to recruit new preachers.

Spong believes that there are two responses to this: one is to
liberalise christianity further and make it more relevent to the modern
world (the response he agrees with) while the other is to turn towards
the fundamentalist side. Spong claims that this will improve short-term
prospects of Christianity, but only at the expense of a further
long-term decline.

(As an aside, I disagree with Spong's conclusions -- liberalising
christianity will only make it less relevent, in my opinion, since there
will be less and less that distinguishes the believer from the
non-believer. Fundamentalism provides that set of distinguishing
beliefs. All religions have a finite lifespan, and unless there is a
massive upswing in fundamentalist christianity, I believe we are seeing,
not the end of christianity, but the begininning of the end.)

Given that christianity is losing its way, a return to extreme
conservativism and fundamentalism is the most successful method of
retaining believers -- instead of having to compete with other
world-views and ideas, you simply lock them out as "immoral". In the US,
evolution has become the whipping boy to rally the troops, if you excuse
my mixed metaphor. Early in the 20th century it was Prohibition. The
choice of evils to battle is in one sense irrelevent, since all that
matters is that there is some sort of evil to fight.

So, going back to Michael's observation: why do creationists worry that
accepting evolution will promote immoral behaviour, while they don't
worry that accepting special relativity or quantum mechanics or
Copernican astronomy will promote immoral behaviour?

Claiming that life is meaningless if god didn't create mankind is no
more (or less) ridiculous than stating that life is meaningless if god
doesn't make the sun rise.

Once you understand that creationists are nothing more than
fundamentalist christians, than these questions become clear. Evolution
has no essential threat to their beliefs any more than chemistry or
mathematics or english literature do, but because of historical
accidents and a certain surface threat, it has been singled out as the
enemy. The point isn't evolution, or morality, but to have an enemy.

I suppose we can all be grateful that the enemy is an intellectual one,
like evolution, rather than a return to the Holy Wars and Crusades of
the past.

> This is a difficult problem.  Eventually, hopefully, creationists and
> evolutionists will both realize that Darwinism threatens only very
> specific Christian ideas, not necessarily including one about what
> constitutes moral behavior.  In the meantime, Darwinists might profit
> from learning more about their opposition.

Know thy enemy.


> Why are creationists
> creationsts?  Not necessarily because they're weak-minded victims of
> manipulation, but because they have certain values that they think
> they should live by, values which they think depend on a creationist
> foundation.

Not true. *Everybody* has values that they live by. Many people
reconcile Christian values with evolution. The fact that creationists
fail to do so shows one of two things:

(1) either they know so little about evolution that they cannot
comprehend how to reconcile their beliefs with it; or
(2) it is a conscious decision to be a creationist, and the immorality
threat is just propoganda.

I have no doubt that creationists come in both flavours.

> The thought of this foundation being annihilated by
> Darwinism is horrifying to them.  Creationism provides something
> important to them that Darwinism can destroy but not replace.
>
> I don't know what the solution is, but as long as people think of
> Darwinism as "advocating" amorality or immorality, I don't think
> there will be one.

Why do people think of Darwinism as advocating amorality and immorality?
Do we see gangs of street kids roaming the streets beating up people
because they think they're monkeys?

Creationists don't see Darwinists acting immorally and excusing their
immorality on Darwinism. Bill Clinton didn't excuse his affairs on the
fact that he was the alpha male of the monkey troop. People make the
link between immoral behaviour and Darwinism because they have been told
to do so by other creationists. Once you make that link, then you can
blame adultery on Darwinism while excusing or ignoring adultery
committed by fellow creationists.

I'm finding this entire creationism debate terribly frustrating, because
time and time again I see well meaning and otherwise intelligent people
arguing as if creationists were just a small group of people who, for
one reason or another, failed to understand Darwinism correctly. That
might very well be true if you are refering to creationists in (say)
France. But in the USA creationism is a powerful political movement,
made  up of very intelligent men and women who know damn well that
Darwinism doesn't encourage immoral behaviour any more than the electron
structure of atoms encourages immoral behaviour.


--
Steven D'Aprano

Herbert Gintis wrote:

>         I don't remember Paul's statement, but I certainly do know that the
> idea of a "natural order" in which there is a "male hierarchy which allocates
> resources" does not correspond at all to the facts. I assume "natural" is
> meant in the positive, as opposed to the ethical sense, because otherwise the
> assertion is not factual. In nature, there is no species that I know of in
> which there is a male hierarchy that allocates resources.
>         This has nothing to do with ev psych by the way. The assertion has to
> do with animal social organization and behavior.

In many animal species --- this includes herbivore mammals (==the horse, elks,
the "cow") birds (the fowl), and fishes (mollies, Xiphophorus, ...) --- males
will, under some circumstances, form small isosexual groups (all male) and
pacifically share the available resources and cooperate once a hierarchy has
been established among them. They form relatively stable dominance orders.
Females (with juveniles) also form small structured groups strongly organized
hierarchically. They "share" the available resources, whilst favouring their
relatives.

In males, as soon females are in sight (or introduced to them), intense
competition among them explodes, the result being that one of the males joins
the females, and excludes all other males from their proximity.

In the swordtail fish, the domestic fowl, the horse the alpha male of the
bachelor group usually becomes the male "left" with the females.

One male serving several females while keeping other males at bay is usually
called in the animal behavior literature a "harem".

....
Social organization based upon agonistic behavior (aggressive-menacing,
defensive-submissive-appeasing)  is a basic regularity found in the animal
world which merits to be qualified as a basic biological law. Even in couples
one pair-member can be shown to dominate the other.

In females, preference for high raking males (unfamiliar ones) has been
experimentally shown in the fowl and surely in many other species, including
humans.

....
Finally, Herbert Gintis wrote on the present topic: "This has nothing to do
with ev psych by the way. The assertion has to do with animal social
organization and behavior."

Unless I do not understand the context in which such a weird affirmation has
been written, it is clear for me that the questions related to social
organization in animals (even in chicken and fish) are of deep relevance for
the comprehension of human behavior, simply because we are animals and share
common ancestors. I do not see how evolutionary psychology could even exist
without considering the human species as part and issued of the animal kingdom.

Jacques Beaugrand






To view archive/subscribe/unsubscribe/select DIGEST go to
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/evolutionary-psychology

Read The Human Nature Daily Review every day
http://human-nature.com/nibbs

Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/

Czeisler, C. et al. 1999 Stability, Precision, and Near-24-hour Period of
the Human Circadian Pacemaker. Science 284(5423):2177-2181.

Abstract:
Regulation of circadian period in humans was thought to differ from that
of other species, with the period of the activity rhythm reported to range
from 13 to 65 hours (median 25.2 hours) and the period of the body
temperature rhythm reported to average 25 hours in adulthood, and to
shorten with age. However, those observations were based on studies
of humans exposed to light levels sufficient to confound circadian period
estimation. Precise estimation of the periods of the endogenous circadian
rhythms of melatonin, core body temperature, and cortisol in healthy young
and older individuals living in carefully controlled lighting conditions
has now revealed that the intrinsic period of the human circadian
pacemaker averages 24.18 hours in both age groups, with a tight
distribution consistent with other species.

I hope that helps.

Rob Quinlan

On Mon, 26 Mar 2001, Irwin Silverman wrote:

>
> A colleague posed the question to me of why we appear to have an
> evolved circadian sleeping waking rhythm of longer than 24 hours
> (based, I presume, on studies where the rhythm has been decoupled
> from environmental cues), yet we follow a 24 hour cycle?
>
> Any help out there?
>
>
>
>
> To view archive/subscribe/unsubscribe/select DIGEST go to
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/evolutionary-psychology
>
> Read The Human Nature Daily Review every day
> http://human-nature.com/nibbs
>
> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
>
>
>

Going back a bit, Jeremy Bowman suggested (in refutation of a
contrary statement) that

"I speculate that homosexuality in ancient Greece was no more
common than it is in present-day Greece (or anywhere else) --
there are just differences in what's approved of and what isn't."
This is surely, at many levels, a key point in EP.

1) at one level, it demonstrates a reasonably common EP (and, to
be fair, academic) defence mechanism; either the evidence is in
favour of my view that non-reproductive behaviour is not favoured
because it is bad from an EP standpoint, or it is deceptive -
societies show either very little evident non-reproductive behaviour,
or a surface culture of non-reproductive behaviour that in fact
conceals exactly the same evidence that would have supported the
theory in the first place, the evidence for which concealment being
that non-reproductive behaviour is not good EP and therefore
cannot have been favoured by that society.  This question-begging
circularism does make propositions proof against refutation, but at
some cost.

The ancient greek view of homosexuality was certainly more
complex than a simple favour/disfavour, but it was also
unquestionably different from that of many other societies; if that
difference is wished out of existence it removes most possibilities
of using history as a test against theory.

2) If history is, contrariwise, to be used as a check on theory, the
example would seem to establish firmly that anything that any
society has been comfortable with cannot be evolutionarily
impossible, or even (given the relatively small number of societies
we have to work with) improbable, and any hypothesis that does
not explain these variations has little claim to credence. Any EP
theory should be liable to refutation by a single instance of a
society incompatible with the premise. If used widely, this criterion
would eliminate an enormous amount of EP theory. If EP deals
with what everybody does and has always done and can't
contemplate doing otherwise, it verges on the trivial; if it deals with
things that some people do/have done and that others don't and
haven't, it slides towards the refutable.

3) if culture is, as Bowman suggests, a meaningless squiggle on
top of an invariant behaviour, we are then called on for a separate
explanation for culture, which is partly what EP was invented to
avoid.

Chris


Health Promotion Journal of Australia
Managing Editor: Chris Borthwick
Editor-in-Chief: Rob Moodie
VicHealth 333 Drummond St. Carlton Vic 3053 AUSTRALIA
Web: http://www.vichealth.vic.gov.au/hpja

FOR RELEASE: 2 APRIL 2001 AT 00:01 ET US
University at Buffalo
http://www.buffalo.edu/
http://www.embo.org/

Scientists probing the origins of life develop method of making novel proteins
using a 21st amino acid

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Investigations into the origins of life and the genetic code
have resulted in a method of developing novel proteins that has enormous
potential for the biotechnology industry while providing some important clues
to answering the question: "How did life begin?"

The research provides significant evidence for the existence of the so-called
RNA world, believed to be the evolutionary stage that predates present
biological systems.

It was published today (April 2, 2001) by scientists at the University at
Buffalo and the University of Tokyo in EMBO Journal (Vol. 20, no. 7
http://www.emboj.org/), publication of the European Molecular Biology
Organization.

In evolving new sequences of an RNA catalyst, the authors also have developed
an efficient method of creating novel proteins built out of not just the 20
amino acids found in nature, but out of additional, so-called non-natural amino
acids designed in the lab.

The research demonstrates for the first time that a precursor to transfer
RNA -- the genetic material that is responsible for synthesizing proteins --
could have acted as the catalyst for reactions that link transfer RNA (tRNA) to
amino acids in a pre-biological era.

Aminoacylation, as that reaction is called, is the key step that spurs
translation, or protein synthesis in cells, but scientists probing how genes
first came to generate life as we know it have been puzzled about how that
crucial step came to be taken, without a catalyst to trigger it.

"Using an in vitro version of Darwinian natural evolution, we have evolved this
RNA catalyst, which provides evidence for support that RNA may well have served
as the evolutionary vehicle necessary for the development of present-day,
DNA-protein-based life forms," said Hiroaki Suga, Ph.D., lead author and
assistant professor of chemistry in the College of Arts and Sciences at the
University at Buffalo.

With applications ranging from proteomics to drug design and novel catalysis,
the synthesis method described in the paper for attaching the transfer RNA to
an unnatural amino acid using a ribozyme, an RNA enzyme, has the potential to
provide scientists with a highly potent tool for engineering brand new
proteins.

The system also has vast applications for the development of molecules with
built-in tracers to help researchers precisely target specific proteins in
living cells. The advantage is that since existing proteins are designed to
"lock onto" only the 20 natural amino acids, an unnatural amino acid would act
as a highly stable molecular tag, unlike current probes that tend to alter the
structure or somehow destabilize any protein to which they are attached.

A patent application has been filed for select catalytic RNA molecules, a
method of constructing them and a method for identifying aminoacylating
molecules.

Ever since the discovery in 1987 that it was feasible to attach unnatural amino
acids to proteins, scientists have wondered how that tantalizing possibility
with its potential for engineering proteins with entirely new functions could
be harnessed in an efficient, cost-effective manner.

"Unnatural amino acid mutagenesis is very complicated," said Suga. "The biggest
stumbling block is synthesizing the unnatural amino acid and attaching it to
transfer RNA."

According to Suga, attachment is physically very difficult because it involves
efficiently and accurately attaching a tiny amino acid to a large
macromolecule, tRNA.

"Our ribozyme can do it," Suga said. Dubbed "Sugazyme" by the group, this
ribozyme offers a more efficient method of attaching tRNA to unnatural amino
acids by using new RNA sequences that Suga evolved in his lab to bind
selectively amino acids and ligate to tRNA without having to use the very
specialized and hard-to-engineer protein enzymes that nature uses.

Suga noted that the current paper describes their success with the process in
vitro, a method that produces minute amounts of the aminoacyl-tRNA. However, in
the near future, the researchers expect to have an in vivo method, using
recombinant methods, capable of producing infinite amounts.


###
The work was funded by the National Institutes of Health.
http://www.eurekalert.org/releases/ub-spt033001.html

Hirohide Saito, Dimitrios Kourouklis and Hiroaki Suga
An in vitro evolved precursor tRNA with aminoacylation activity
EMBO Journal  April 2, 2001; 20 (7)

Oxygen and sugar boost brain power
Gerard Seenan
Guardian

Monday April 2, 2001

Mental performance and agility can be considerably improved by inhaling pure
oxygen or by taking a high dose of glucose, scientists revealed yesterday.

Just as athletes can increase their physical performance by eating the right
foods, students can better their performance by inhaling a shot of oxygen or
swallowing some glucose just before a test.

Andrew Scholey, director of the Human Cognitive Neuroscience unit at the
University of Northumbria, discovered through tests that mental strength could
be improved by giving the brain the right fuel.

Full text:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4163386,00.html

BBC NEWS ONLINE
Monday, 2 April, 2001, 00:06 GMT 01:06 UK
Mozart 'can cut epilepsy'

Music, particularly Mozart, could have a therapeutic effect on epilepsy, say
scientists.
Short bursts of Mozart's Sonata K448 have been found to decrease epileptic
attacks.

There are now calls for more research to be done to see whether other music has
such a positive effect on the brain.

Professor John Jenkins, who has reviewed the international research on music
therapy, said it was very probable that work by other musicians could also
trigger the "Mozart Effect."

He told the BBC that Mozart and also Bach have similar structures.

Patients who had been exposed to 10 minutes of the music were then tested and
just 10 minutes exposure improved their spatial skills - such as paper cutting
and folding.

Studies on rats showed that those who had listened to the K448 sonata were able
to negotiate a maze faster than those who had been played minimalist music or
left in silence.

Full text:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/health/newsid_1251000/1251839.stm

Reply to part of this earlier notice.

Mostcreationist drivel, ancient and modern, used as propaganda against
"Darwinism" is concerned with matters having nothing whatsoever to do with
Darwinism or any other science, e.g., morality, good and evil, socialism,
abortion, respect for authority, and the like. Even the fancy Intelligent
Design "theorists" descend to this when faced with serious science. Trouble
is that serious scientific arguments fail, sometimes even in NATURE or
SCIENCE, let alone in the GUARDIAN or the LOS ANGELES TIMES.

________


This is false.  Most creationist drivel is concerned with providence, and
the promoters of this drivel, however misguided, are right to be concerned
about it.  A very large part of contemporary civilization was developed
within a providentialist framework, and it is not clear that all that
social, political, artistic, and intellectual capital could have been
accumulated without providentialist assumptions.  Darwinism, at a minimum,
casts doubt on providence.  It may be inconsistent with any concept of
providence rich enough to preserve that capital. If so, this is a real
problem.  Alas, scientists are not known for their command of intellectual
and cultural history.  Even those few who care about history generally talk
on as if truth were the only thing worth pursuing.  It isn't.  Love, beauty,
social stability, comfort, health, pleasure, the various freedoms,and peace
of mind are just a few others.  It may be that all of these things are not,
in Leibniz's terms, eternally compossible.  What some of the more reflective
creationists really think is that Darwinism, true or not, is a cultural
corrosive, that it tends to eat away at other things that are themselves of
great value.  They echo the words of some Victorian lady, who upon hearing
about the theory supposedly exclaimed, "Dear me, I hope it isn't true, and
if it is, I hope it won't become generally known."  Now I don't believe they
are right.  I am both an epistemic and a historic optimist, and I hold as an
article of faith, that truth can be known and is always at least compatible
with goodness, even if it does not promote it.  But I recognize this is a
nontrivial assumption that may reasonably be rejected.  So I make allowances
for the drivel and hope for a higher synthesis in which the best purposes of
both are served.  (It helps to remind oneself that Jesus, Augustine,
Aquinas, Michelangelo, Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Newton, Shakespeare,
Locke, and Lincoln were all creationists.)


David K. Hill
Dept. of Philosophy
Augustana College
Rock Island, IL

Thankyou Nancy for your comments.  Perhaps I can reply on behalf of ONE
male, who's primary clinical work and research interests involve couples'
conflicts - usually over infidelities by one or both partners, on a roughly
equal basis I might add.

I find the feminist understanding of power (and differentials) useful but
incomplete when applying theory to people's life traumas.  Feminists have
rightly focussed our attention on deficiencies of power commonly experienced
by women in contemporay relationships. However, until recently, little
attention has been afforded to the male experience of powerlessness.
At issue for most couples (especially the domestically violent end of the
spectrum) is NOT that one person has power over the other (usually assumed
male over female - even when the research suggests otherwise), but that
there is little recognition of the DOMAINS of power - all of them.
Perhaps when we unflinchingly address ALL of the domains of power using
multiple congruent theoretical perspectives, then we might have some hope of
containing the suffering that people on this listserve understand as rooted
in biology of the species.

May I suggest - based on my observations of a series of in-depth case
studies; my clientele - that there is almost always (with some exceptions in
the seriously antisocial) an approximate balance of power in gender
relations within a couple relationship.  To see this we need to use our
understanding of female power in mate selection, on her capacity for
deception in service of improved and varied genetics - in common and crass
Australian parlance leg-opening power, and child withholding power.  Male
abuse of power can be viewed as a simpe (and males are simple creatures, and
nowhere near as proactive as we would have you believe :) reaction to female
power ploys.

Again excusing the colloquialisms of my country, I get results when I
address this power struggle from BOTH sides of the gender divide.  Usually I
suggest that we need to employ bullshit detection theory as a subset of
halfwit theory.  They tend at first to find some displeasure in beng
labelled halfwits, and that they are full of B-shit, but when presented with
the unpalatable facts of human mating strategies, and ALL of the power
plays, not just those identified by feminist theory.  Once out in the open I
usually get a smile, and finally a willingness to deal with reality, instead
of theory and fairytales.

Thanks again for being forthright in your comments

Graeme Deeth

Why Creationism in America?

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

[...] Here, many Christians believe that common law came from
Christian foundations and therefore the Constitution derives from it.
They use various quotes from Supreme Court Justices proclaiming that
Christianity came as part of the laws of England, and therefore
from its common law heritage....

But one of our principle Founding Fathers, Thomas Jefferson,
elaborated about the history of common law in his letter to
Thomas Cooper on February 10, 1814:

"For we know that the common law is that system of law which was
introduced by the Saxons on their settlement in England, and
altered from time to time by proper legislative authority from
that time to the date of Magna Charta, which terminates the
period of the common law. . . This settlement took place about
the middle of the fifth century. But Christianity was not
introduced till the seventh century; the conversion of the first
christian king of the Heptarchy having taken place about the year
598, and that of the last about 686. Here then, was a space of
two hundred years, during which the common law was in existence,
and Christianity no part of it.

". . . if any one chooses to build a doctrine on any law of that
period, supposed to have been lost, it is incumbent on him to
prove it to have existed, and what were its contents. These were
so far alterations of the common law, and became themselves a
part of it. But none of these adopt Christianity as a part of the
common law. If, therefore, from the settlement of the Saxons to
the introduction of Christianity among them, that system of
religion could not be a part of the common law, because they were
not yet Christians, and if, having their laws from that period to
the close of the common law, we are all able to find among them
no such act of adoption, we may safely affirm (though
contradicted by all the judges and writers on earth) that
Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law."

In the same letter, Jefferson examined how the error spread about
Christianity and common law. Jefferson realized that a
misinterpretation had occurred with a Latin term by Prisot,
"*ancien scripture*," in reference to common law history. The
term meant "ancient scripture" but people had incorrectly
interpreted it to mean "Holy Scripture," thus spreading the myth
that common law came from the Bible. Jefferson writes:

"And Blackstone repeats, in the words of Sir Matthew Hale, that
'Christianity is part of the laws of England,' citing Ventris and
Strange ubi surpa. 4. Blackst. 59. Lord Mansfield qualifies it a
little by saying that 'The essential principles of revealed
religion are part of the common law." In the case of the
Chamberlain of London v. Evans, 1767. But he cites no authority,
and leaves us at our peril to find out what, in the opinion of
the judge, and according to the measure of his foot or his faith,
are those essential principles of revealed religion obligatory on
us as a part of the common law."

There did occur, however, some who wished a connection between
church and State. Patrick Henry, for example, proposed a tax to
help sustain "some form of Christian worship" for the state of
Virginia. But Jefferson and other statesmen did not agree. In
1779, Jefferson introduced a bill for the Statute for Religious
Freedom which became Virginia law. Jefferson designed this law to
completely separate religion from government. None of Henry's
Christian views ever got introduced into Virginia's or U.S.
Government law.

Unfortunately, later developments in our government have clouded
early history. The original Pledge of Allegiance, authored by
Francis Bellamy in 1892 did not contain the words "under God."
Not until June 1954 did those words appear in the Allegiance. The
United States currency never had "In God We Trust" printed on
money until after the Civil War. Many Christians who visit
historical monuments and see the word "God" inscribed in stone,
automatically impart their own personal God of Christianity,
without understanding the Framers Deist context.

The Framers derived an independent government out of
Enlightenment thinking against the grievances caused by Great
Britain. Our Founders paid little heed to political beliefs about
Christianity. The 1st Amendment stands as the bulkhead against an
establishment of religion and at the same time insures the free
expression of any belief. The Treaty of Tripoli, an instrument of
the Constitution, clearly stated our non-Christian foundation. We
inherited common law from Great Britain which derived from pre-
Christian Saxons rather than from Biblical scripture.

Today we have powerful Christian organizations who work to spread
historical myths about early America and attempt to bring a
Christian theocracy to the government. If this ever happens, then
indeed, we will have ignored the lessons from history.
Fortunately, most liberal Christians today agree with the
principles of separation of church and State, just as they did in
early America.


"They all attributed the peaceful dominion of religion in their
country mainly to the separation of church and state. I do not
hesitate to affirm that during my stay in America I did not meet
a single individual, of the clergy or the laity, who was not of
the same opinion on this point"

-Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 1835

Full text:
http://www.earlyamerica.com/review/summer97/secular.html

Note particurly the burial of an high status old woman with a young
man. This male was most probably ritually sacrificed in suttee.


The Center for the Study of the Eurasian Nomads (CSEN)
-----------------------------------------------------------------

Statuses of Sauromatian and Sarmatian Women by Jeannine Davis-
Kimball

"We are riders; our business is with the bow and the spear, and
we know nothing of women's work." -- Herodotus IV, 114


Hellenistic freize from Thessaloniki Greeks and Amazons
http://www.csen.org/WomenWarriors/Womens.status.html

Numerous myths and legends grew up around women or tribes of
women in ancient times, who either fought alongside or alone
against men. The Greeks and Romans called some of these Amazons.
The Scythian word for these women is Oiorpata, meaning "to kill
man." Not until the 20th century did the archaeological evidence
actually prove the existence of thse fearsome women and, thus,
historians and scholars have largely dismissed the ancient
accounts as being purely mythological. However, new excavations
at Pokrovka on the Kazakh steppes along the Kazakhstan and
Russian border have yielded evidence to the contrary -- that
women among the Sauromatian and Early Sarmatian (Early Nomad)
tribes were warriors. Their kurgans (burial mounds) are found in
the southern Ural steppes. Offering included in their burials
that the nomads needed for their journey to the next world
included ordinary household objects, religious and cultic items,
horse trappings, and weaponry for both men and women alike. The
populations in this region were Indo-Europoids and spoke an Indo-
Iranian language. A skull of one such women was reconstructed. At
this early date there is no Mongoloid admixture among the
Sauromantians and Sarmatians at Pokrovka.

Reconstruction of the skull an Early Nomadic woman
http://www.csen.org/WomenWarriors/Womens.status.html

Mortuary Offerings and Statuses Artifacts from the Pokrovka
burials in the southern Ural steppes include ordinary household
objects, religious and cultic items, horse trappings, and
weaponry for both men and women alike. The cultic objects were
found in female burials. Animal bones, along with an iron knife
use for cutting the meat and eating, are the remains of food left
for the journey to the next world. After we developed a
methodology for studying the artifacts by placing them in
categories according to their use, they were matched with the sex
of the person in the burial to determine the status of these
individuals. Male statuses were predominently warriors. In
addiiton there were a few very poor individuals without grave
goods, and a few other males that had a child buried with them.
No female burials at Pokrovka had a child in the burial. About
one-third of the burials were children and except for those in
male burials, all were buried alone in their own burial pit.

Femininity and Hearth Status Female statuses fell into several
major categories that are not mutually exclusive. Women of the
femininity and hearth status have many imported artifacts
including gold-covered bronze earrings, imported jet and other
semi-precious stone beads as well as faience and magical glass
eyebeads.

They also frequently contained spindlewhorls. The burials with
spindlewhorls may present a special category as some
spindlewhorls associated with Saka (a neighboring tribe of
nomads) female burials had magical scrolls carved on the surface.
Magical connotations have come down to us in such as tales of
"spinning straw into gold."


Artifacts indicating femininity and hearth
http://www.csen.org/WomenWarriors/Womens.status.html


******* Priestesses The women's occupations during their lifetime
run the gamut from housewife, to herder, to priestess, to warrior
horsewoman. These are the remains of a society lost to history,
where gender roles were not defined according to sex and women
more often than not were tribal leaders with power and status.
Two cemeteries, Pokrovka 10 and Pokrovka 2, had significant
numbers of female burials with mortuary offerings indicating they
were priestesses of various degrees of rank or importance. This
priestess pictured here was of very high status.

Priestess with animal syle plaques
http://www.csen.org/WomenWarriors/Womens.status.html

Gold artifacts including animals style plaques and temple
pendants, fossilized sea shells, a beautiful bronze mirror, and a
ceremonial altar were all part of her accoutrements. The
priestesses' burials held stone-carved or clay sacrificial
altars, fossilized sea shells, and animal-style amulets.


Priestess mirror and altar in situ
http://www.csen.org/WomenWarriors/Womens.status.html

The skeleton found in the burial with these artifacts was in her
teens. She was buried in a very small catacomb off a small pit
and was quite difficult to excavated. However, all the details of
her burial were carefully preserved.

Artifacts from a young priestess burial
http://www.csen.org/WomenWarriors/Womens.status.html

*******

Because they are located much further to the east
of the north Black Sea region where the ancient Herotodus
gathered his information, the female warriors at Pokrovka were
most probably not the Amazons that this ancient Greek historian
wrote about in the 5th century B.C. He probably had heard of
"fighting women" and connected them to the Amazons that the
Greeks mythologized. The Amazons have many provenances including
North Africa, Anatolia, and Colchis east of the Black Sea. Other
women warriors belonged to the Sauromatian and Sarmatian tribes
living between the Don and Volga rivers and whose lifestyle was
very similar to that of the women at Pokrovka in the southern
Urals. Further research has confirmed that Sarmatian women of
special status belonged to tribes from the region near Ufa,
located at the western edge of the Ural Mountains, to the north
Black Sea region around Azov. The warrior women's burials
contained bronze arrowheads sometimes in a quiver made from small
branches and leather, iron daggers and swords, and amulets that
indicated prowess.

Woman Warrior artifacts
http://www.csen.org/WomenWarriors/Womens.status.html

Warrior-Priestesses After careful analyses of the artifacts, it
became apparent that warrior-priestesses were also interred at
Pokrovka. In addition to weaponry and amulets of prowess.
Accoutrements belonging to priestess were also included as
mortuary offerings. In this warrior-priestess burial fossilized
sea shells and a natural stone in the shape of a sea shell were
excavated. The stone contained residue of a white substance
(chalk?) that probably was used in a ritual.

Skeleton of a young Warrior-Priestess in situ
http://www.csen.org/WomenWarriors/Womens.status.html

Amulets and arrowheads, young Warrior-Priestess burial
http://www.csen.org/WomenWarriors/Womens.status.html

Weapons and cultic items, young Warrior-Priestess burial
http://www.csen.org/WomenWarriors/Womens.status.html

Headdresses Priestesses and warrior-priestesses were important
members of their tribes, performing oracles and divinations.
Although no headdresses were excavated from priestess burials, it
is known from other sources that both priestesses and warrior-
priestesses wore elaborate headdresses decorated with gold
plaques. Two examples are illustrated below.

Issyk Warrior-Priestess
http://www.csen.org/WomenWarriors/Womens.status.html

Although little seems to be recorded in textual sources
concerning the women performing cultic duties in the 12th
century, this sculpture in the Tanais Museum north of the Black
Sea reveals that the traditions continued. Her conical-crowned
hat with a brim is similar to one excavated in the Tarim Basin
made of felt and found in a Saka female's burial.
[The traditional pointed witch's hat.]

12th century sculpture of a priestess
http://www.csen.org/WomenWarriors/Womens.status.html

-----------------------------------------------------------------

More about the "Warrior Women of the Eurasian Steppes" may be
found in Archaeology, January-February, pp. 44-48; About the
Issyk Warrior Priestess in Archaeology, September-October 1997.
Abstracts can be found at the following websites.
http:sarmatians.html http:gold.html

In a message dated 4/1/01 4:38:35 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
mep2@... writes:

> This is a serious PR problem for ev theory, something it will have to
> overcome in order to attain secure, widespread acceptance.  Too bad T. H.
> Huxley isn't around he was a genius at claiming the moral high ground in
> his advocacy of ev theory, always positioning himself as the truth-seeker:
> "The foundation of morality is to have done, once and for all, with
> lying."

That splendid statement of Darwin's Bulldog is as sound today as it was in
the XIXth century, of course. And it could be the best guide to a new and
serious attempt on the part of articulate science to combat creationism. I
say "serious," because it would mean getting out there and doing the tedious
work of highlighting the lies and then showing why, one at a time, those lies
are no more conducive to morality than they are to immorality. That's the
sort of thing Huxley did; there are damned few examples of it being done now.
This may well be because, counter-intuitive as it may seem, it is more
dangerous to an academic or public-intellectual career today, in the USA or
the U.K., than it was in the 1860s, in England, to speak of
purposefully-propagated, nonsensical but beloved public notions as "lies."

PRG

AFRICA NEWS
This Technique is No Passport to Immortality
Story Filed: Sunday, March 25, 2001 5:20 PM EST

Nairobi, Mar 25, 2001 (The Nation/All Africa Global Media via COMTEX)-- After
reading my column on human cloning last week, a correspondent e-mailed to
inform me of one danger of that bioskill. It is that those with money will
monopolise the technology and use it to ensure immortality for themselves.

It is a claim that can be made only by people who do not really understand what
a clone is. In The Sun Shines Bright, Isaac Asimov defines it as "...any
organism that arises out of a cell by means other than sexual reproduction...an
organism with a single parent (except where self-fertilisation is
concerned)..."

In this sense, human beings have cloned certain plant species from time
immemorial by putting a twig in the ground so it takes root and grows. Indeed,
the word "clone" comes from the Greek klon, a twig or shoot, and klan, to cut.

In ordinary agriculture, we call it propagation by grafting, that is,
production and reproduction of plants by cutting and layering. Animals cannot
be propagated in this way.

But to "cut" a cell and make an animal out of it is essentially the same
process. The question is: Is the twig you have planted and has taken root the
same organism as the parent plant? Is your clone really you?

No. The twig is merely the offspring of the original plant, only that it has
been reproduced asexually. Because it does not have the genes of a second
parent, the twig is also an identical twin of the parent plant.

For human beings, this distinction between a person and his clone is doubly
significant. For a human being is not - like other animals - merely a bundle of
genes. He does not behave merely from an orchestra of instinctual impulses.

Yes, certain behavioral patterns are "wired" in us - to use a highly subjective
term beloved of Robert Ardrey, Robin Fox, Lionel Tiger, Anthony Storr, Konrad
Lorenz, Desmond Morris and other "pop ethologists", as Stephen Jay Gould
derides them in Ever Since Darwin.

But since we are a thinking animal, we have a double bequest. For there is also
the socio-culturo-environmental heritage to help mould our individual mental
make-ups. The latter means that the definition of human beings must always
remain open-ended upwards. If the gene, as the basis, cannot be reformed - even
if you had a hundred Kivutha Kibwanas! - consciousness, as the superstructure,
is reformed by new experience every minute that an individual lives.

The significance of this latter legacy is that, though our capacity for
learning is unlimited, our actual knowledge at any one time or place is and
will always remain limited. Human history consists in the progressive narrowing
of this gap, a gap, however, which can never be fully bridged, not even by the
"Theory of Everything" for which Stephen Hawking and others have been striving.

Asimov poses: "What made me the kind of writer I am? Was it only my genes?" The
answer is that, at birth, his genes had the potential of a scientist and a
writer. But only that. For what if his parents had not migrated from Russia to
the US in particular circumstances? What if he had not been a Jew in a racist
society? What if he had not gone to school? What if he had not been born in
relative poverty?

What if he had been born before Jules Verne, H.G. Wells and others had invented
science fiction as a genre? How would he have built his Foundation and Empire
on a galactic basis and circumvented Albert Einstein's light speed limit before
astrophysics had discovered that region of the universe called "super-space" in
which the laws of physics do not apply and everything happens instantaneously?

He writes: "The Isaac Asimov clones, once they grow up, simply won't live in
the same social environment as I did, won't be subjected to the same pressures,
won't have the same opportunities.

"What's more, when I wrote, I just wrote; no one expected anything in
particular from me. When my clones write, their products will always be
compared to the Grand Original and that could discourage and wipe out anyone.
It would be very unlikely that any one of [my clones] would be another Isaac
Asimov..."

This reminds us of Frank Herbert's "axolotl tanks" (in the Dune series) and the
"gholas" which the tanks produced from tissues of Duncan Idaho, the original
"mentat". The gholas were all progressive mental and physical aberrations of
the molecular "template".

Asimov perorates: "The clone is not you. Your clone is your twin brother (or
sister) and is no more you that your ordinary identical twin. Your clone does
not have your consciousness and if you die, you are dead. You do not live on in
your clone. Once that is understood, I suspect that much of the interest in
clones will disappear..."

I should stress that, at the superstructural level, your experience and memory
are the essence of your personality and individuality. Your clone does not have
your experience and memory and, therefore, cannot be you.

Yes, your clone - since it has genes identical to yours - has the potential to
score all your life achievements. But that is all we can say. The
socio-environmental factors that shaped your career will not be the same as his
or hers.

This is the answer to those who - because they think they are more intelligent
than and superior to all others - delude themselves that, through cloning, they
will have partaken of nectar and ambrosia and live like the denizens of
Olympus - for ever.

* Ochieng@...
by Philip Ochieng

The Story of Molecular Biologists James Watson & Francis Crick
BY ROBERT WRIGHT

         On Feb. 28, 1953, Francis Crick walked into the Eagle pub in Cambridge,
England, and, as James Watson later recalled, announced that "we had found the
secret of life." Actually, they had. That morning, Watson and Crick had figured
out the structure of deoxyribonucleic acid, DNA. And that structure—a "double
helix" that can "unzip" to make copies of itself--confirmed suspicions that DNA
carries life's hereditary information.
         Not until decades later, in the age of genetic engineering, would the
Promethean power unleashed that day become vivid. But from the beginning, the
Watson and Crick story had traces of hubris. As told in Watson's classic
memoir, "The Double Helix," it was a tale of boundless ambition, impatience
with authority and disdain, if not contempt, for received opinion. ("A goodly
number of scientists," Watson explained, "are not only narrow-minded and dull
but also just stupid.") Yet the Watson and Crick story is also one of sublime
harmony, an example, as a colleague put it, of "that marvelous resonance
between two minds--that high state in which 1 plus 1 does not equal 2 but more
like 10."

Full text:
http://www.watsoncrombie.com/watsonandcrick.html

Ain't nobody here but us monkeys



   By Bob Lancaster
March 30, 2001

  I always feel a little sorry for these yokels when another of them
comes down from the hills with a new version of the old legislation
to repeal the theory of evolution and to refute the insufferable
contention that all of mankind, or anyhow him and his'n, burbled up
out of the same gene pool that brought forth also J. Fred Muggs and
the only creditable emoter in "Every Which Way But Loose," the
fightin' orang Clyde.

Evolution is a concept that is hard on stupid people-perhaps even
harder on them than it is on those who are merely grossly ignorant
and superstitious and naive.

It offers them no quarter and no consolation, and in the dark of
night it whispers to them a terrible prospect, that there's no escape
for them, in this world or in the kingdom come, from the conflicted
and frightened mortal mess of who they are.

That midnight intimation of doom is no less scary for an ol' boy's
believing that the voice of the devil is its deliverer. So there's
always the initial pang of sympathy, even if it doesn't last,
subsumed in the ensuing flare of resentment against pushy people
forked forward by ecclesiastic-raised haints to write their denial
fantasies into public policy and oblige general subscription to them
by the force of law. The genesis of the little spasm of sympathy, I
suppose, is that I've been there myself, before the charitable
intervention, there where pinhead seraphs traffic and the glossalalia
starts to scan, and so know the discomfiture.

The theory of evolution truly is the dire enemy of everything that
the common variety of Christian fundamentalists believe about
themselves, this world, and the afterlife. If human beings really did
evolve from very different life forms, and if we are still evolving -
so that the human beings of a million years hence are bound to be at
least as different from us as we are from the hairy, gibbering little
upright scramblers of a million years ago-then the entire creationist
world view is exposed as a cruel and tacky hoax.

That view simply won't admit of a Creator prying open an
australopithecene and sticking an immortal soul in among its giblets.
It requires that the first human beings had no ancestors at all, much
less beastly ones, and that they looked, spoke, and thought pretty
much as we do. They simply appeared out of nothingness not very long
ago with all the earth's other flora and fauna, finished products
from the gitgo and never works in progress, and the life forms
haven't changed since. No new species have appeared, and if some of
the originals disappeared, dinosaurs for example, it was only because
they didn't come running when Noah honked the all aboard.

If all of this isn't literally true-not just mythically true-then in
the creationist view the whole business fades to hoax, as bereft of
verisimilitude as a masquerade: Heaven and Hell become fairy-tale
places and when you die you die.

A great many of the more sophisticated Christians, and adherents of
other faiths, have artfully adapted to the more trying of the
Darwinian implications - the geological time scale and the slow
development by natural processes of the more complex life forms,
including the one clever enough to have made "I'll be a monkey's
uncle" into a rather cheerful, humorous figure of speech. But from
their high crags of literalism and uniformitarianism, the
fundamentalists haven't been able to make that leap. Their faith
admits of no accommodation or compromise, and for them the old
conflict between science and religion remains stark and
irreconcilable. In their estimation, you either swallow the whole
camel or strain at the first gnat and beg off altogether. You accept
and affirm "the truth," as Rep. Holt outlined it in his HB 2548 a few
days ago, or you scuttle your old monkey bohunk on down to the
brimstone cubby that already has your John Henry on it.

They've got so much invested in this proposition that one might
almost forgive them their trespasses like HB 2548 - or one might if
the target of their anti-evolution lurchings weren't always the
children. Their own children, your children, all children, waylaid
unsuspecting in the classroom when they suppose they're getting the
bona fide scientific skinny. Drafting poor old damned-if-they-do-or-
don't science teachers to serve as creationism's instrument, its
cootied prophets holding forth.

Meantime, science has no such evangels, nor enthusiasts, nor even
lobbyists. And it doesn't dispute any of the creationists' redneck
calumnies so much as it blithely ignores them. It just goes on about
its business serene and oblivious, pondering anatomical relics and
examining lizard bones 25,000 times older than those of slain Abel.
It doesn't even speak the same language as the yokels eternally
laying it siege: 142 years after "Origin." For example, they still
haven't the first clue what science means by the word "theory," and
give them another 142 years and they still won't know… and won't
care, and won't wear no underwear.

And yet defenseless as science appears in these recurrent little
sallies ag'in it, there's never the least doubt which point of view
will prevail, and which table will end up looking for all the world
like the Nairobi Trio. Igno and supe got some new ink with HB 2548,
with their old bud dumb middlemanning in the House well to their
Rastus and Roofus endplay, but they looked such buffoons that it was
awful hard to see danger in them. If a ponderable threat to the
integrity of scientific thinking and teaching and learning in
Arkansas ever does materialize, surely its point of origin won't be
such a congress of clowns

Copyright © 2000 Arkansas Times Inc.

Hello,

I really hope that they do a better job of replicating this finding
before the media hype begins, because the original Mozart effect
turned out to be (in essence) bunk. Unfortunately, one study of MIT
students, never replicated, became the heart of a lucrative market to
sell classical music CDs and tapes to parents anxious to make their
little bundles of joy into "gifted children."  Bad science to those
of us who love science, and abuse of culture to those of us who
believe children should be encouraged to listen to music for
enjoyment, not for the status and benefits it will occur.

I will believe it when I see the half-dozen replications of the work,
for now, I suspect it is just another extension of the superstition
that Western people have developed about classical music and the
mythic figures who wrote that music.

Nancy Melucci, Ph.D.
East Los Angeles College
Monterey Park, CA

Steven Reiss wrote:

<<The motivational profiles may show us how violent prone boys develop
different values and motives than those who are not violent prone.  To the
extent to which these motivational traits are genetically determined (they
are universal and have significant survival value), the initial testings are
consistent with the hypothesis that the children showing school violence have
different natures than their nonviolent peers.>>

Isn't it pretty to think so?

But seriously, I have a question: what part of these psychometric findings
makes the case that these motive matrices are genetically encoded more than
they are environmentally elicited? Cooperation and submission have
significant survival value as well.

It's not that I deny that there may be genetic pre-dispositions to developing
these motives, it's just that I don't see how simply describing the
similarities between the motives of potential bombers makes the case that
they are inborn.

NEW STATESMAN
Book Reviews - It's all just meat. Julian Evans declares that eating people is
not wrong, after reading a feeble study of cannibalism

Book Reviews
Julian Evans Monday 2nd April 2001

Cannibal: the history of the people-eaters
Daniel Korn, Mark Radice and Charlie Hawes Channel 4 Books, 208pp, £14.99

The closest I have come to cannibalism was on a short walk I took through the
West Papuan highlands in the mid-1980s. Three days out of Wamena, the main
settlement, I descended from spectacular rainforest to find myself in a lush,
damp village clinging to the mountain wall of the Baliem river gorge. The
village, Tangma, belonged to the Papuan Dani people, but it had a missionary
airstrip, and, remarkably, a lone white female missionary lived there. Before
turning back, I stayed with her for two days at the mission house, a place
furnished in unlovely, oaken 1950s simplicity. Why did I not go on? Partly
because the forest on the other side was less penetrable and the way less
certain; and partly because fewer than 20 years earlier, in 1968, the people on
the far side of the gorge had killed and eaten two Protestant missionaries,
Stan Dale and Phil Masters. In 1974, these people, the Kim Yal, had also
attacked a preacher from another tribe and a dozen of his helpers; all 13 were
eaten. Though I possessed not a shred of missionary zeal, I didn't feel like
risking any misunderstanding about my intentions.

Full text:
http://www.newstatesman.co.uk/200104020043.htm

In a prior correspondence, I described how we were able to test violent-prone
boys on motivational traits using a new type of personality instrument.  The
results showed that the boys were unusually motivated by vengeance and status
(attention) and, also, that they were motivated to be disconnected to
community and parents.  The wild card was how fearful they were, or the
strength of their motivation to experience tranquility.  The main point of
correspondance was to show the potential contibutions evolutonary psychology
can make, as compared to evolutionary biology, if evolutionary psychologists
embrace psychometrics to define observational units, because evlouationary
biologists often seem to just make up their observational units based on what
they think is common sense.

Judith Greer and others have asked why I consider the motives to be largely
genetic in origin -- why not consider them to be learned.  Well, the behavior
genetic studies addressing this question needs to be assessed -- this is now
possible given the improvement in measurement.  Nevetheless, there are some
valid reasons for expecting the results to show significant genetic
influences.  To funderstand my thinking, you need to be familiar with the
motivational system I put forth in Who Am I: The 16 Basic Desires and in
earlier journal articles in BRAT and AJMR.  Basically, the following
summarizes the main reasons.

1.  Nearly all of the 16 motives are universally motivating -- nobody is
indifferent to whether or not they are having sex, for example, although how
motivated people are by sex varies greatly across individuals.  Nobody is
indifferent to whether or not others are paying attention to them -- some
like it, others do not, but nobody is indifferent.

2.  15 of the motives are seen in animals.

3.  Many of the motives have been described by instinctual researchers --
James, McDougall.  (It is invalid to dismiss their work for having produced
too many instincts.  Astronomers say there are billions of stars, biologists
say there are billions of cells, but psychologists are limited to a half
dozen instincts?  Exactly how many is too many?  As for me, I'd say to go
with as many as you can observe.  We observed and validated 16.)

4.  The motives are much more stable across the lifespan than behaviorists
admit.  For example, aggression shows significant stability from age 6 to 40
(see Eron and Huessmann longitudinal studies.)  I know of nobody who is more
curious at age 50 than they were at age 20, and nobody I know knows anybody
whose curiosity has grown and few, if any, whose curiosity has significantyl
fluctuated throughout the adult years.  The people I know who were status
oriented as teens are still status oriented.

5.  If there is a genetic basis to the motives, individual variations in
strength of motives are implied.  Since no further assumptions seem needed to
explain much of the data on the motivational traits, occum's razor seems to
apply.

6.  Theories based on motivational traits can explain why therapists often
treat the same people over and over again.  When Billy plays apart from
others, for example, behaviorists observe that Billy lacks social skills.
Assuming that Billy has the capacity to enjoy social interactions, they teach
him social skills. Under motivational trait theory, the reason Billy lacks
social skills is that he has no use for them (he does not enjoy social
interactions, not because he lacks the skills, but because he of normal
variations of the genes that make social interactions motivating.)  If this
theory is right, Billy will relapse over and over again because he has no use
for the social skills  the therapists teach him -- social skills bring him
outcomes he does not care about.
     In the past, it was agued that a fearful child had experienced more
associations of neutral stimuli with trauma.  This was disconfirmed by
studies.  Tranquility (anxiety sensitivity) predicts fears; associations with
trauma is a poor predictor.

6.  There is nothing in learning theory that predicts the results of the
cases I described.  Learning theory is just a language system, not a
scientific theory that can be falsified.  In contrast, my views can eb
falsified.  Each of the motives can be studied for genetic factors.

Obviously, children do learn, and learning affects their behavior in some
general sense.  As scientists, though, we should embrace the theories that
produce the most valuable research.  Right now, I would argue that an
evoluationary approach to school violence can explain much more of the data
with fewer assumptions and in a more straightfoward and simpler manner than
can any learning hypothesis I have seen.  Also, the genetic basis of the
motives can be tested and we can search for genes that predict school
violence based on knowing the profile (high vengeance, high attention, low
loyalty,  fearfess).  If somebody wants to put forth a learning hypothesis --
hey, join the party.  I am not aware of any such hypotheses, however.

Steven Reiss

NEW YORK TIMES
April 1, 2001
Even Baboons Get the Blues

How an animal behaviorist became one of the boys.
By ROB NIXON

A PRIMATE'S MEMOIR
By Robert M. Sapolsky.
304 pp. New York:
Scribner. $25.

Robert M. Sapolsky had the good sense, from a writer's point of view, to do a
lot of crazy things while he was young. Most of them involved baboons. The week
he graduated from Harvard, he set out for the plains of southwestern Kenya,
where he was to follow a baboon troop on and off for more than 20 years. He did
so both in his professional capacity as an animal behaviorist and in his less
professional capacity as one of the troop's low-ranking males.

As a boy, entranced by the primate-filled dioramas at the Museum of Natural
History in New York, he dreamed of morphing into a mountain gorilla. But his
letter to Dian Fossey met with silence, and his scientific curiosity steered
him toward questions of social organization that no forest primate could
answer. Sapolsky resigned himself to abandoning all gorilla aspirations: ''You
make compromises in life; not every kid can grow up to become president or a
baseball star or a mountain gorilla. So I made plans to join the baboon
troop.''

Full text:
http://www.nytimes.com/books/01/04/01/reviews/010401.01nixont.html

_____


A Primate's Memoir: A Neuroscientist's Unconventional Life Among the Baboons
by Robert M. Sapolsky
Hardcover - 304 pages (March 2001)
Scribner; ISBN: 0743202473 ; Dimensions (in inches): 1.01 x 9.57 x 6.43
AMAZON - US
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0743202473/darwinanddarwini/
AMAZON - UK
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0224061216/humannaturecom/

Robert Sapolsky, the author of Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers and other popular
books on animal and human behavior, decided early in life to become a
primatologist, volunteering at the American Museum of Natural History and
badgering his high school principal to let him study Swahili to prepare for
travel in Africa. When he set out to conduct fieldwork as a young graduate
student, though, Sapolsky found that life among a Kenyan baboon troop was
markedly different from his earlier bookish studies. Among other things, he
confesses, he had to become a master of shooting anesthetic darts into his
subjects with a blowgun to take blood samples, a mastery that required him to
become "a leering slinky silent quicksilver baboon terror." He also had to
learn how to negotiate the complexities of baboon politics, endure the
difficulties of life in the bush, and subsist on cases of canned mackerel and
beans.
His memoir is, in the main, quite humorous, although Sapolsky flings a few
darts along the way at the late activist Dian Fossey--who, he hints, may have
indirectly caused the deaths of her beloved mountain gorillas by her unstable,
irrational dealings with local people--and at local bureaucrats whose interests
did not often coincide with those of Sapolsky's wild charges. It is also full
of good information on primates and primatology, a subject whose practitioners,
it seems, are constantly fighting to save species and ecosystems. "Every
primatologist I know is losing that battle," he writes. "They make me think of
someone whose unlikely job would be to collect snowflakes, to rush into a warm
room and observe the unique pattern under a microscope before it melts and is
never seen again." --Gregory McNamee

From Booklist

"I had never planned to become a savanna baboon when I grew up; instead, I had
always assumed I would become a mountain gorilla." Thus begins primatologist
Sapolsky's reminiscences of 20 plus years studying baboons in Kenya. Originally
intending to study the effects of stress on baboons, the author became enmeshed
not only in the lives of his baboon subjects but in the social lives and
politics of the people who live around his study area. Tales of darting baboons
with anesthetic for physical examinations intertwine with stories of friendship
with the local Masai village; visits from other field researchers (such as
"Laurence of the Hyenas") intersperse with observing the overthrow of the
baboon troop's alpha male while the author also deals with the post-colonial,
bribery-ridden bureaucracy of Kenya. Humorous writing worthy of Gerald Durrell
at his best mixes with hard-eyed descriptions of the reality of field work in a
third-world country, and the good times and problems of the baboons tend to
mirror those of their human neighbors. Sapolsky often wears his heart on his
sleeve, and this emotional involvement combined with the scientific realities
of the tales he tells makes for engrossing reading. Nancy Bent



A Primate's Memoir: A Neuroscientist's Unconventional Life Among the Baboons
Robert M. Sapolsky

   Our Price: $20.00
Retail Price: $25.00
You Save: $5.00 (20%)
In Stock:Ships within 24 hours
Same Day Delivery In Manhattan
Format: Hardcover, 304pp.
ISBN: 0743202473
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Trade
Pub. Date: March  2001
sales rank: 2,522



           Buy it Now!



As you order, each item will be listed in Your Shopping Cart in the upper left
corner. You may make changes at Checkout.
Safe Shopping Guarantee!












Write your own Review
Be the first to write a review


bn.com customers who bought this book also bought:
Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home: And Other Unexplained Powers
of Animals, Rupert Sheldrake
The Latchkey Dog: How the Way You Live Shapes the Behavior of the Dog You Love,
Jodi Andersen
Sharks, Leighton Taylor
Dogs Never Lie about Love: Reflections on the Emotional World of Dogs, Jeffrey
Moussaieff Masson
Reptiles and Amphibians, Harold G. Cogger (Editor)



ABOUT THIS ITEM


  From Our Editors
For readers who love tales from the wild, especially ones about our closest
relatives, like Gorillas in the Mist, Robert Sapolsky, a Stanford professor and
research associate with the Kenyan Institute of Primate Research, has written a
humorous and poignant memoir of the years he spent in the bush with savanna
baboons. Sapolsky is a wonderful writer, and his previous books -- Why Zebras
Don't Get Ulcers and The Trouble with Testosterone -- were both Los Angeles
Times Book Award finalists.



Synopsis
In this gem, the scientist and noted essayist trains a wry wit and a highly
perceptive eye on his two-plus decades of observing baboon behavior in Kenya.

Sidesplitting vignettes about monkey politics alternate with equally hilarious
tales of misadventure on the backroads of East and Central Africa.
Sciencephobes needn't be worried: there's nary a page of neuroendocrinology in
the book.

A supporting cast of tribal misfits, postcolonial weirdos and marginally
psychotic truck drivers will keep you chuckling from start to finish.

From the Publisher

"I had never planned to become a savanna baboon when I grew up; instead, I had
always assumed I would become a mountain gorilla," writes Robert Sapolsky in
this witty and riveting chronicle of a scientist's coming-of-age in remote
Africa. Raised in an intellectual, immigrant family in Brooklyn, Sapolsky
wished he could live in the primate diorama in the Museum of Natural History.
He wrote fan letters to primatologists, started reading their textbooks at age
fourteen, and even learned Swahili in high school, all with the hopes of one
day joining his primate brethren in Africa. Finally, upon graduating from
college, Sapolsky's dream comes true when, at age twenty-one, he leaves the
comforts of the United States for the very first time to join a baboon troop in
Kenya as a "young transfer male."

Book smart and naive, Sapolsky sets out to study the relationship between
stress and disease. But he soon learns that life in the African bush bears
little resemblance to the tranquillity of a museum diorama. He is alone in the
middle of the Serengeti with no radio, no television, no electricity, no
running water, and no telephone. His nearest neighbors are the Masai, a warlike
tribespeople whose marriages are polygamous, with wedding parties featuring
tureens of cow's blood. The victim of countless scams and his own idealistic
illusions, Sapolsky nevertheless survives culinary atrocities, gunpoint
encounters, and a surreal kidnapping, while witnessing the encroachment of the
tourist mentality on the farthest vestiges of unspoiled Africa. As he conducts
unprecedented physiological research on wild primates, he becomes evermore
enamored with his subjects — unique and compelling characters in their own
right — and he returns to them summer after summer, until tragedy finally
prevents him.

Here is Robert Sapolsky's exhilarating account of his life in the bush with
neighbors both human and primate, by turns hilarious and poignant. The
culmination of more than two decades of experience and research, A Primate's
Memoir is a magnum opus from one of our foremost scientist-writers.

From Library Journal

Sapolsky (The Trouble with Testosterone), a professor of biology and neurology
at Stanford and a research associate with the Institute of Primate Research at
the National Museum of Kenya, focuses on his field research with baboons and
experiences in Africa in general. He includes all the typical elements of
recent popular field biology books (e.g., Margaret Lowman's Life in the
Treetops, LJ 5/15/99): how he got his funding, set up camp, and his experiences
with the animals he studies, but his hilarious writing style and sense of the
absurd are fairly unique in the genre. He alternates tales of the baboons and
their interesting social lives with his off-site adventures, which include a
surreal kidnapping and an emotional pilgrimage to see mountain gorillas and
muse on Dian Fossey's legacy. The book ends poignantly when an epidemic strikes
the baboon troop. Recommended for college and public libraries. [Previewed in
Prepub Alert, LJ 11/1/00.] Beth Crim, Prince William P.L., VA Copyright 2001
Cahners Business Information.

From Publisher's Weekly

Few would relish a job requiring proficiency with a blowgun as well as a
willingness to put up with parching heat, low pay and copious amounts of baboon
shit. But for Sapolsky (The Trouble with Testosterone), a Stanford professor
and MacArthur grant recipient, it was literally a dream come true. As a boy in
New York City, he'd wanted to live in one of the African dioramas at the Museum
of Natural History. One week after graduating from Harvard in the mid-1970s, he
got his chance: he went to Kenya to study social behavior in baboons.
Hilariously unprepared for the challenges of living in the bush, the na ve grad
student learned to deal with supply and transportation snafus, army ants and
giant cockroaches, safari tourists, dinners of canned spaghetti coated with a
mixture of sugar and rancid camel's milk, and surreal government bureaucracies.
He developed great fondness for "his" baboons, whose behavior seemed uncannily
like that of a bunch of quarrelsome human adolescents, and discovered that
their interactions didn't necessarily conform to accepted theories. While
Sapolsky's primate observations are always fascinating, his thoughts on Africa
and Africans are even more compelling. As funny and irreverent as a good ol'
boy regaling his friends with vacation-from-hell stories, Sapolsky can also be
disarmingly emotional as in his clear-headed tribute to late gorilla researcher
Dian Fossey, and his final chapters, which reveal his rage and impotence as he
watched his baboons succumb to a horrific plague. Filled with cynicism and awe,
passion and humor, this memoir is both an absorbing account of a young man's
growing maturity and a tribute to the continent that, despite its troubles and
extremes, held him in its thrall. Agent, Katinka Matson. (Mar. 1) Forecast:
Heralded by Oliver Sacks and Edward O. Wilson, and with a well-placed excerpt
of this book in Discover magazine, Sapolsky will venture out on a seven-city
author tour that should help bring him to the attention of readers interested
in animals, Africa, ecology and travel. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business
Information.

From Kirkus

From the author of The Trouble with Testosterone (1997) and Why Zebras Don't
Get Ulcers (1993), a witty concoction blending field biology, history,
hilarious cross-cultural mishaps, and hair-raising adventure. Sapolsky
(Neurology and Biological Sciences/Stanford Univ.), the recipient of a
MacArthur Foundation"genius" grant in 1987, has spent years studying the social
behavior, emotional life, and stress-related diseases of baboons in Kenya. The
title of his memoir's first section,"The Adolescent Years: When I First Joined
the Troop," indicates just how closely attached to his subjects he became. What
Jane Goodall did for chimpanzees, Birute Galdikas for orangutans, and Diane
Fossey for gorillas, Sapolsky does in spades for baboons. Never mawkish, he
reports their antics and their relationships with a remarkably perceptive eye.
That same keen eye is turned from time to time on himself; his
blood-and-milk-drinking Masai neighbors; a field biologist referred to only as
Laurence of the Hyenas; Samwelly, the extravagantly inventive Kenyan whom
Sapolsky hires to manage his camp; and assorted individuals he meets on his
hitchhiking sorties around Africa. Among the most alarming of these is the
malevolent Pius, a rough bush Kenyan truck driver who for days holds the author
captive while forcing endless Coca Colas on him. Sapolsky writes of all this
and more in an entertaining style that scintillates and charms, making it nigh
impossible not to become an ally of both him and his sometimes
all-too-human-seeming baboons. While not an autobiography per se, it spans the
years from his first enthusiastic trip to Kenya when he was 21 to his most
recent one, a much sadder affair—andforthebaboons a tragic one. A wild and
wondrous account, filled with passages so funny or so brilliant that the reader
wants to grab someone by the arm and demand,"Hey, you just gotta listen to
this." Author tour