Electronic books, or ebooks, have enormous potential to promote learning. These
documents can be highlighted and annotated with text and drawings; annotations
are indexed automatically and can be shared with others. Integrated
dictionaries allow definitions to be found with a single click as you are
reading, and text can be searched, copied, and cited with ease. Papers,
reviews, dissertations, great literature, even whole libraries, can be shared
in a simple, compact, yet powerful, format. Unfortunately, few titles covering
evolutionary approaches to human psychology and behaviour are available at
present. Consequently, I have produced a number of important and useful titles
in the 'Darwinian Ebooks' series. The books prepared so far are listed below.
You are welcome to share these with colleagues and students.

If you own the copyright to relevant publications (books, papers, reviews, etc)
and would like to circulate these as ebooks please email the text to me at
Ian.Pitchford@....

First, download the free Microsoft Reader
http://download.microsoft.com/download/msreader/ISInstal/1.5/WIN98Me/EN-US/msrea\
dersetup.exe
Second, download the free Encarta dictionary
http://www.microsoft.com/reader/read/msebdict.lit

Third: download the ebook(s) of your choice:

Darwinian Ebooks

Darwin and Modern Science (1909)
Edited by A. C. Seward
With contributions from Francis Darwin, George Darwin, August Weismann, Hugo De
Vries, Ernst Haeckel, James George Frazer, and others.
http://human-nature.com/darwin/seward.lit

By Charles Darwin:

On the Origin of Species, First Edition
http://human-nature.com/darwin/origin1.lit

On the Origin of Species, Sixth Edition
http://human-nature.com/darwin/origin6.lit

The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex, Second Edition
http://human-nature.com/darwin/descent2.lit

The Autobiography of Charles Darwin
http://human-nature.com/darwin/auto.lit

The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Vol. I
Edited by Francis Darwin
http://human-nature.com/darwin/letters1.lit

The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Vol. II
Edited by Francis Darwin
http://human-nature.com/darwin/letters2.lit

Adobe PDF files and books can be read and annotated in the Adobe E-Book Reader
http://bookstore.glassbook.com/store/getreader.asp

<<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>>
Ian Pitchford <Ian.Pitchford@...>
Editor, Evolutionary Psychology Online
Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies
http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/
School of Health and Related Research
University of Sheffield, S10 2TA, UK
http://human-nature.com/darwin/
<<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>>

GLOBE AND MAIL
Goodbye to the gene?
Genes have had a glorious run in the 20th century,
inspiring a whole series of astonishing biological
advances. But their glory days may be over.
ALANNA MITCHELL

Saturday, December 30, 2000


The Century of the Gene
By Evelyn Fox Keller
Harvard University Press,
192 pages, $33.99

Sometimes, with great luck, you happen on a book that is wondrous in its
ability to take a topic apart and explain it lucidly.

Sometimes, the joy is to be found in the way an author is able to put those
pieces back together.

And sometimes, it is the elegance both of analysis and synthesis that makes a
book truly great.

The Century of the Gene,by Evelyn Fox Keller, a professor of the history and
philosophy of science at MIT in Cambridge, Mass., reaches that level and then
vaults past it into the category of rare volumes that are unforgettable.

This the sort of book that, once found, can never be relinquished. The breadth
of intellect is so strong, the importance of the subject so acute, the language
so beautifully wrought, that you find yourself drawn to read it again and
again, only to find a new dimension each time.

You have the uncanny sensation of being in a room whose walls are covered with
mirrors reflecting -- you think -- reality. This book seems to take you gently
by the hand and lead you through the mirrors into an unsuspected world beyond.
And then to one never imagined beyond that, and then to hint at yet another
further on. And to do it all in the fresh spirit of exploration, never bound by
the suffocating strictures of orthodoxy.

Full text:
http://www.globeandmail.com/gam/Science/20001230/BKGENE.html

Title: It Ain't Necessarily So
Author: Richard Lewontin

The complete review's Review:

        It Ain't Necessarily So collects nine reviews written by Richard
Lewontin for The New York Review of Books, centered on the subject of human
biology. It is only a selection of what he has written for The New York Review
of Books, but -- though enjoyable pieces such as his review of Jurassic Park
are not included -- it is a fairly well-rounded and certainly representative
collection.

        Book reviews come in all shapes and sizes, with different fora serving
different purposes. The New York Review of Books goes about reviewing
differently than the complete review, which in turn goes about reviewing
differently than The New York Times Book Review (to name only three of our
favourite fora). Among the neat things at The New York Review of Books is that
reviews there often serve for essayistic digressions by the likes of such
lights as Lewontin. Reviewing several books at a go, the reviews often focus as
much on the general issues under discussion as on the books themselves. (The
New York Review of Books' reviews are also, notoriously, used as a substitute
for actual perusal of the books under review -- neat summaries though they may
be, this we certainly can not condone.)

Full text:
http://www.complete-review.com/reviews/lewontin/itaintns.htm

At 08:47 21/12/00 +0000, Keith Sutherland wrote:
>Five Steps to Tyranny
>
>History is dominated by tyrants who have inflicted appalling acts of
>cruelty and carried out horrific atrocities. Most people believe that
>only truly evil leaders can be so ruthless. But, in Five Steps to
>Tyranny, Sheena McDonald reveals that each and every person is capable
>of committing terrible acts against fellow human beings.
>
>http://www.bbc.co.uk/alert/spotlight/soc_1214_fives.shtml

>I would not be quite so pessimistic. It is perhaps an effect of pop culture
>that once a book is a few decades old, like some Rolling Stones "tube," it
>elicits only yawns when mentioned anew.......

Please forgive me for using this interesting posting as a mere hook on which
to hang a question currently interesting my son and me. It concerns the
Hawthorne Experiment. Although carried out in the 1920s and 30s, the
findings of this work were considered of such importance as, in my
experience, to have figured largely in academic courses taught well into the
1970s ( I should stress that this point is most certainly not offered as a
contradiction to the generally valid observation made above). What my son
and I would like to know is whether or not it still finds a place in current
programmes.

Many thanks,

Mike

Has anyone explored the possible overlap between James Watson's hypothesis
about skin color/libido and Afrocentric/meloncentric ideas (e.g., discussed
in the Baseline essays, etc.)?  It could an intriguing topic for a graduate
student to pursue.

I'm also curious about how modern race-realists will view (or already view)
the intersection between Watson's ideas, on the one hand, and on the other
hand, Rushton's and Miller's, among others.

Does anyone care to share a few soundbites about what will inevitably be
called the "grand synthesis" (or, depending on your persective, "absurd
synthesis") of 21st century racial science?

Alondra Oubre


Alondra Oubre
http://www.alondraoubre.com

From
http://www.sunday-times.co.uk/news/pages/sti/2000/12/31/stifgnusa02007.html



December 31 2000 UNITED STATES
DNA pioneer hit by race-sex row
Jonathan Leake and Sophie Petit-Zeman


JAMES WATSON, the scientist who jointly discovered the structure of DNA,
has shocked academia with a speech suggesting a link between skin colour
and sex drive.

The Nobel-prize winner left an audience of academics stunned when he
suggested that darker-skinned people have stronger libidos. He then flashed
slides of bikini-clad beauties with miserable expressions onto a screen to
illustrate a second theory that fat people are unambitious - and said he
would not hire them.

About 200 researchers had gathered at Berkeley University in California for
the lecture, but by the end many had walked out in disgust, accusing Watson
of sexist and racist comments. Last week there were calls to stop him
making any more scientific presentations at Berkeley.

Full text:
http://www.sunday-times.co.uk/news/pages/sti/2000/12/31/stifgnusa02007.html

Alondra Oubre
Phone: (818) 716-6274
FAX: (818) 713-0880
Message: 818-808-4948

Available from January 2001

Environmental Effects on Cognitive Abilities
by Robert J. Sternberg (Editor), Elena L. Grigorenko (Editor)
This item will be published in January 2001. You may order it now and we will
ship it to you when it arrives.
Hardcover - 350 pages (January 2001)
Lawrence Erlbaum Assoc; ISBN: 0805831835
AMAZON - US
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0805831835/darwinanddarwini/
AMAZON - UK
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0805831835/humannaturecom/

This volume discusses how the environment influences the development and the
maintenance of cognitive abilities. This discussion is important because: genes
always have their effect either in correlation with or in interaction with the
environment; we can control environment, at least to some extent; even if
attributes are heritable, they can be modified; too much of what is written
about "the environment" is vague; the pendulum has swung too far in the
direction of biology; and the debate needs to go beyond specifying
"environment" and "context" as important to specifying just what the
environmental and contextual factors are. In the past, environmental approaches
have been piecemeal, with articles and books tending to concentrate on one or
two factors without putting it all together. Thus, the editors' goal is to
integrate what formerly have been very diverse literatures into a single
volume. It offers both a response to those who focus primarily on genes as
determiners of developmental outcomes and an elaboration of just what it is
about "contexts" that makes for their effects on these outcomes. The individual
chapters are accessible to lay readers as well as professionals, making the
book appropriate for a wide-ranging audience including psychologists, parents,
social workers, employers and educators.

Sternberg Research Group
http://www.yale.edu/pace/rjsternberg/index.html

Minds, Brains, Computers the Foundations of Cognitive Science: An Historical
Introduction
by Robert M. Harnish
This item will be published in January 2001. You may order it now and we will
ship it to you when it arrives.
Paperback - 320 pages (January 2001)
Blackwell Pub; ISBN: 0631212604
AMAZON - US
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0631212604/darwinanddarwini/
AMAZON - UK
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0631212604/humannaturecom/

Minds, Brains, Computers serves as both an historical and interdisciplinary
introduction to the foundations of cognitive science.

Tracing the history of central concepts from the 19th century to the present,
this study surveys the significant contributions of philosophy, psychology,
neuroscience, and computer science. The volume also investigates the theory of
mind from two contrasting approaches: the digital computer vs. neural network
models.

Authoritative and comprehensive, Minds, Brains, Computers is the ideal text for
introductory courses in cognitive science as well as an excellent supplementary
text for courses in philosophy of mind.

About the Author

Robert M. Harnish has been at the University of Arizona since 1971 where he is
professor of philosophy and linguistics, and research scientist in cognitive
science. He is co-author of Linguistics, Fifth Edition (2000), co-editor of The
Representation of Knowledge and Belief (1986) and Neural Connections, Mental
Computation (1989), and editor of Basic Topics in the Philosophy of Language
(1994).

Dr. Robert M. Harnish
Professor of Philosophy
Professor of Linguistics
Research Professor Program in Cognitive Science
URL: http://w3.arizona.edu/~phil/faculty/Harnish/index.htm
Email: harnish@...

NEW YORK TIMES
January 2, 2001  Single-Page Format
A CONVERSATION WITH / Anne Fausto-Sterling
Exploring What Makes Us Male or Female
By CLAUDIA DREIFUS

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — On a recent frozen winter evening, Dr. Anne Fausto-Sterling,
56, a professor of biology and women's studies at Brown, sat in a restaurant
here, nibbling on a light snack and talking about her favorite subject: the
application of ideas about gender roles to the formal study of biology.

In the academic world, Dr. Fausto- Sterling is known as a developmental
biologist who offers interesting counterpoints to the view that the role
division between men and women is largely predetermined by evolution.

"When people say `it's nurture' or `it's nature' in making us male or female, I
take the middle ground and say that it's a combination of both," she said.
"That's not a popular position to take in today's academic environment, but it
is the one that makes the most sense."

Full text:
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/02/science/02CONV.html
Single page format:
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/02/science/02CONV.html?pagewanted=all

FOR RELEASE: 1 JANUARY 2001 AT 00:01 ET US
Institute of Psychiatry
http://www.iop.kcl.ac.uk/

New imaging research reveals dysfunction in the brain's 'hub' in the earliest
stages of schizophrenia

A new brain imaging study from the Institute of Psychiatry shows for the first
time that the thalamus, the brain's main sensory filter or 'hub', is smaller
than normal from the earliest stages of schizophrenia. The findings, published
in the American Journal of Psychiatry in January, may explain why people with
schizophrenia experience confusion during their illness.

The thalamus is the area where information is received and relayed to other
areas of the brain. It is of particular interest in schizophrenia because of
the role it plays in processing information. The thalamus receives information
via the senses, which is then filtered and passed to the correct regions of the
brain for processing. People with schizophrenia often have difficulties in
processing information properly and as a result may end up with an information
overload in some areas of the brain.

This study, led by Dr Tonmoy Sharma, involved 67 participants: 38 were
experiencing their first episode of psychosis and 29 were healthy volunteers.
In contrast to other studies, thirteen of the people with schizophrenia had no
or little experience of antipsychotic medication.

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans identified differences in the thalamus
between the two groups. Previous MRI studies have identified several brain
regions affected by schizophrenia, but the results in the thalamus have been
inconclusive. This study finds that even in the earliest stages of
schizophrenia the thalamus is smaller than in healthy people.

Dr Tonmoy Sharma said: "This study reveals that there is a fundamental problem
in the hub of the brain. If you think of the brain in terms of networks, it is
like making a phone call when the line is not connected properly, the call
can't be made, or you may get through to the wrong person. It is the same in
the brain. If there are problems with the connections, information will not be
passed to the correct regions. The ability to filter and process information is
vital for leading a normal life."

These findings, along with a recent study from Dr Sharma's team that showed
people with schizophrenia have decreased grey matter at the earliest stages of
the illness suggest a role for brain imaging in pinpointing warning signs of
the illness and even preventing its development.



Reference: U.Ettinger, X Chitnis, V Kumari, D Fannon, A Sumich, S O'Ceallaigh,
V Doku and T Sharma. Magnetic resonance imaging of the Thalamus in first
episode psychosis. American Journal of Psychiatry 2001; 158 (1)

Notes to editors
The Institute of Psychiatry is based at the Maudsley Hospital and is part of
King's College London. For structural images of the brain, background to the
study, information on schizophrenia and all other enquiries, please contact Dr
Tonmoy Sharma:  t.sharma@...
http://www.eurekalert.org/releases/iop-nir122200.html

NEW YORK TIMES
January 2, 2001  Single-Page Format
Researcher Challenges a Host of Psychological Studies
By ERICA GOODE

Here is the problem, as Dr. Linda Bartoshuk sees it: Say that two men, call
them Richard and John, are both suffering from depression, and a researcher
wants to find out if a particular medication will offer them relief.

Asked to rate the intensity of his depression on a scale of 1 to 10, Richard
selects a 6. John, given the same rating scale, also picks a 6. But does he
feel the same degree of depression as John?

Many researchers, said Dr. Bartoshuk, a psychologist at the Yale University
School of Medicine and an expert on taste perception, assume the answer is yes,
that, in effect, a 6 is a 6 is a 6.

But in fact, Dr. Bartoshuk said, nobody really knows, since depression, like
many internal experiences, is subjective.

And therein lies an error that compromises many psychological studies, she
believes, perhaps calling their findings into question.

Full text:
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/02/science/02ERRO.html
Single page format:
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/02/science/02ERRO.html?pagewanted=all

NEW YORK TIMES
January 2, 2001  Single-Page Format
2000 YEAR IN REVIEW
The Year in Science: The Age of the Gene
By NICHOLAS WADE

Biology will dominate the 21st century much in the way that the computer chip
was the most influential technology of the previous half century. So at least
many biologists believe, and events of 2000 lent substance to this view.

The genome of the Drosophila fruitfly was sequenced in March, giving biologists
the full parts list of a favorite laboratory organism. At a White House
ceremony in June, the two rival teams racing to sequence the human genome
declared a truce and jointly announced the essential completion of their task.
And a powerful new technology based on stem cells started to prove its promise
as a possible way of rejuvenating the body's diseased or aging tissues.

Full text:
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/02/science/02WEEK.html
Single page format:
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/02/science/02WEEK.html?pagewanted=all

Genome advances bring opportunities and a question: Who pays the bill?
Sharon Schmickle
Star Tribune
Saturday, January 1, 2000

Money wasn't the main reason that Cari and Shane Mattson begged last year for
the chance to screen their embryos for a genetic defect. An inherited disease
had made their son, Jay, terribly sick for most of his 16-month life. He
underwent a liver transplant and had repeated bouts with invasive tubes and
heavy doses of drugs before he died in August 1999.

"I just didn't want to put another child through that," Cari said.

The idea seemed to make economic sense, too. Jay's medical bills had run to
more than $1 million. Odds were one in four that another child of the Mattsons'
would be born with the same defect. It would be a relative bargain to spend
$15,000 or even more to create embryos in a clinic, find those without the
defect and implant them in Cari's womb.

"I was sure that the insurance company would pay for it," Shane said.

But Aetna US Healthcare turned them down, said the Mattsons, who live in
Schofield, Wis. And other insurers probably would have done the same.

While the world applauded the news last June of the deciphering of the human
genome -- a scientific breakthrough -- those who focus on health-care costs
faced new questions about who should pay for the practical use of such
research.

Some genetic services -- such as counseling and testing for people with family
histories of inherited diseases -- are covered by more and more health plans
and will become a standard benefit within three to five years, according to a
recent survey of managed-care executives by GeneSage Inc., a San
Francisco-based company that advises the industry on genetic medicine.

Full text:
http://www.startribune.com/viewers/qview/cgi/qview.cgi?template=variety_a_cache&\
slug=pay01

The Triumph of Design and the Demise of Darwin

'The Triumph of Design' clearly and dramatically shows the gaping holes in
Darwinian theory and the mounting evidence for the intelligent design of the
universe.

The video features Phillip Johnson, the distinguished law professor from the
University of California, Berkeley whose best-selling book, 'Darwin on Trial,'
reignited the evolution controversy in the early 1990s.

In addition to new animation, Triumph showcases original footage -- from Africa
to Alaska to the controversial school board hearings in Topeka, Kansas.

Created by Emmy-award winning producer Jack Cashill, Ph.D., the video is
narrated by Woody Cozad.
http://www.dxmarket.com/worldnetdaily/products/V0004.html

______

NEW RELEASE! Icons of Evolution   [up]

ICONS OF EVOLUTION: SCIENCE OR MYTH?
Why much of what we teach about evolution is wrong
by Jonathan Wells

What some biologists know . . .

. . . and are not telling you

In this shocking book, Berkeley-educated doctor of biology Jonathan Wells lets
you in on scientific discoveries you won't learn about from college and high
school textbooks -- and reveals a dirty little secret known only to some of his
fellow biologists:

The best-known 'icons' of evolution - from comparisons of fish and human
embryos, to moths on tree trunks, to pictures of apes evolving into humans -
are false or misleading. For decades, biology students have been taught things
about evolution that are simply untrue.

These icons of evolution appear even in the most recent textbooks, although the
scientific literature is full of evidence that they are false. Apparently,
dogmatic promoters of Darwinian evolution fear that without these icons public
faith in their claims will disappear, so they knowingly misinform our children
and suppress scientific evidence.

In Icons of Evolution Jonathan Wells reveals:

*How the textbook version of the origin of life assumes the exact opposite of
what scientists now believe was the environment on the early Earth

*How scientists have long known that drawings supposedly showing similarities
between fish and human embryos were faked, yet continue to use them as evidence
for evolution

*How Darwin's theory of natural selection is illustrated with staged
photographs showing moths on tree trunks where they don't actually rest

*How the alleged role of mutations in evolution is illustrated with
artificially-engineered fruit flies that show the opposite of what evolutionary
theory requires

*How horse evolution and pictures of apes evolving into humans are used to
promote a materialistic philosophy that has no legitimate place in science
classrooms

Icons of Evolution is both an eye-opening tour of discoveries in contemporary
biology, and a stirring call for professional and educational honesty. It
reveals that Darwinian evolution is a theory in crisis that distorts the truth
to maintain its influence over science education. And it is a policeman's
whistle, calling upon scientists to clean house and rid their textbooks of
lies.

Icons of Evolution is also essential reading for taxpayers who want to know how
their hard-earned money is being used to indoctrinate children in a myth.

Jonathan Wells is a post-doctoral biologist and senior fellow at the Discovery
Institute, and holds Ph.D.s from both Yale University and the University of
California at Berkeley. He is a member of several scientific associations and
has published widely in academic journals. He lives with his family near
Seattle, Washington.

List Price: $27.95. Hardcover. 330 pages. October 2000.
http://www.dxmarket.com/worldnetdaily/products/B0039.html

Remote Italian town on the map for geneticists
Clues to disease are sought

By Tom Hundley
Tribune Foreign Correspondent
December 31, 2000

GIOI, Italy In 1556 a plague killed off most of the inhabitants of this remote
mountain village. Fearing God but knowing little of science or medicine, the
survivors burned church records in an attempt to rid themselves of the
contamination.

On a recent afternoon, Father Guglielmo Manna sat at his desk in the musty
office of Sant' Eustachio, a village church that predates the plague, and
showed a visitor a volume of parish records from 1625—the baptisms and
marriages that mark the apparent revival of Gioi.

These crumbling pages with their spidery scrawl may provide scientists with the
key to the secrets of a host of modern plagues.

DNA researchers believe Gioi's 1,648 inhabitants, because of their isolation
and self-contained lifestyle, may possess a uniquely homogeneous gene pool that
could provide clues to certain hereditary illnesses and disorders such as
cancer, Alzheimer's disease, osteoporosis, stroke and schizophrenia.

Full text:
http://www.chicago.tribune.com/version1/article/0,1575,ART-48966,00.html

MONTREAL GAZEYYE
Saturday 30 December 2000
'The language that made life'

It was quite a year in science. The human genome was mapped, the space station
took shape and the world wasn't ended by a dramatic particle physics experiment
CHARLES SHANNON
The Gazette

REUTER, WELLCOME TRUST / It's not modern art, it's a computer screen showing
part of the 3-billion-letter map of human genetic code.

In the competition for science story of 2000, no recount will be needed. At a
June 26 ceremony to mark the successful mapping of the human genome, U.S.
president Bill Clinton declared, "Today we are learning the language in which
God created life."

High-flown hyperbole, but not far off. The instruction book for making a human
being, with the subtle variations that differentiate each individual, is
encoded in more than 3 billion pairs of molecules, divided among 23 separate
strands called chromosomes, inside every human cell.

Strung along those chromosomes, hard to distinguish from what has been called
"junk DNA," are roughly 50,000 key sequences called genes, which determine such
things as height, eye colour, blood type, intelligence, susceptibility to a
wide range of diseases, and even propensity for certain types of behaviour.

Full text:
http://www.montrealgazette.com/technology/pages/001230/5019696.html

December 31, 2000 Contact:

IMPRINTED GENE FOUND ON HUMAN CHROMOSOME 19;
MOUSE VERSION INVOLVED IN NURTURING BEHAVIORDURHAM, N.C. - Duke University
Medical

Center researchers report that an unusual gene-control mechanism called
"imprinting" is at work on human chromosome 19. For imprinted genes, the gene
copy that is turned on depends only on whether it came from the mother or
father, rather than on the classic laws of Mendelian genetics, where genes are
either dominant or recessive.

In the Jan. 1, 2001, issue of Genomics, the researchers report that a
particular gene called PEG3, or paternally expressed gene 3, is imprinted in
humans, just as it is in mice. Mouse studies have shown that only the copy of
PEG3 that is inherited from the father is functional, and the Duke researchers
now have confirmed that is true in humans as well.

"Just because you have an imprinted gene in the mouse doesn't mean it's going
to be imprinted in humans," said principal investigator Randy Jirtle, professor
of radiation oncology and member at the Duke Comprehensive Cancer Center. "This
is also the first evidence of imprinting on human chromosome 19."

Imprinted genes usually occur in clusters, so the researchers are now looking
for other imprinted genes in the region of chromosome 19 near PEG3, said Duke's
Susan Murphy, lead author of the study, which was funded by the National
Institutes of Health. To date, about 40 imprinted genes have been identified in
humans, primarily on regions of chromosomes 7, 11 and 15.

Generally speaking, imprinting is not reversible - if the functional copy
becomes faulty, the non-working copy can't be turned on. The region of
chromosome 19 that contains PEG3 has already been linked to ovarian cancer and
gliomas, a form of brain cancer.

"Imprinted genes are particularly susceptible to complete loss of function or
inappropriate overexpression, and have been implicated in a number of diseases
as well as neurobehavioral disorders, including autism," said Murphy, a
research associate in radiation oncology whose older son's death from cancer
and younger son's diagnosis of autism prompted her to enter imprinting
research.

Earlier this year, other Duke researchers reported preliminary findings that
suggest imprinted regions on chromosomes 7 and 15 are involved in autism.

In addition to being the first evidence of imprinting on chromosome 19, the
PEG3 findings indicate the possibility that the similarities between the human
and mouse versions of the gene might extend to behavior changes caused by loss
of the gene's function in mice, the researchers said.

Cambridge researchers reported last year that female mice that inherited a
faulty PEG3 gene from their fathers - leaving them without a functional copy of
this gene - demonstrated severe nurturing deficiencies that resulted in the
deaths of most of their offspring.

"We don't know if there are behavioral changes associated with loss of this
gene in humans," emphasized Jirtle. "What we do know is that, in humans, PEG3
is imprinted in the tissues we tested and that it remains imprinted throughout
development and adulthood."

The PEG3 gene codes for a protein believed to be involved in transcription, one
of the steps in reading genetic material to make proteins. Scientists speculate
the nurturing problems seen in mice without PEG3 might be caused by
"downstream" effects - genes whose expression would normally be aided by the
PEG3 protein - rather than by a lack of PEG3 itself.

While no behavioral impact has been established for the human PEG3 gene, Jirtle
noted that advancing technologies make it easier to identify genes and clarify
their functions.

"For a long period of time, it was believed that nurturing controlled
behavior," he said. "In mice, it's been shown that genes can have a profound
impact on behavior, even on what might be thought of as the most fundamental
behavior of mother and offspring."

Co-author of the study is Andrew Wylie, a research associate funded by
AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals Ltd., Cheshire, UK.
http://www.dukenews.duke.edu/med/imprint.htm

List members may be interested in a paper about "The Evolutionary Psychology
of Faith-Healing and the Placebo Effect", available at:

http://cogprints.soton.ac.uk/documents/disk0/00/00/10/78/index.html

Nicholas Humphrey
Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science
London School of Economics
Houghton Street
London WC2 2AE
tel. 020-7955-6826
n.humphrey@...

HMS BEAGLE
Mood Menders
New Research on Antidepressants

by Maia Szalavitz
Posted December 22, 2000 · Issue 93

Abstract

Recent research into the molecular mechanisms of antidepressants offers new
treatments for depression and a better understanding of this common mental
illness.

For decades, neuroscientists have sought to understand how antidepressants work
and why so many drugs with seemingly varied, even opposing, mechanisms of
action can be used to stave off lingering black moods with some degree of
success. Though it commonly is believed that raising serotonin levels brings
relief, experts have long known that this explanation is contradicted by data
and is far too simple to be correct.

Recently, a new theory about antidepressant action has been gaining attention
and support. This set of hypotheses may help resolve questions not only about
how antidepressants work, but about what successful talk therapies do, and what
causes some types of depression.

Eric Nestler, chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of
Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, says, "The major challenge is that
antidepressants are a very diverse group of chemicals and their protein targets
vary. Some act on serotonin, some work on the norepinephrine transporter,
others bind to chemicals we haven't even identified. When you give them to
animals, you can find some common changes, but the real challenge is to relate
specific molecular adaptations to antidepressant action.

Full text:
http://news.bmn.com/hmsbeagle/93/notes/feature1

HMS BEAGLE
Bold Science
Seven Scientists Who Are Changing Our World
by Ted Anton

Reviewed by Jim Dawson
W.H. Freeman & Co., 2000
Posted December 22, 2000 · Issue 93

In a small lecture room at the University of Pennsylvania about 10 years ago,
immunologist Polly Matzinger stepped before a gathering of science writers and
began her presentation on the human immune system. Within seconds the overhead
projector failed.

Bold scientists united by creativity and independent thought.
After fussing with the machine, a frustrated Matzinger pulled a blackboard to
center stage and announced that she would give her lecture the old fashioned
way. She picked up a piece of chalk and for the next two hours talked and
diagramed her way through one of the most enthralling science lectures the
writers had ever heard.

Full text:
http://news.bmn.com/hmsbeagle/93/reviews/review

HMS BEAGLE
INTERVIEW

Gregor Mendel
"Interviewed" by David Bradley
Posted December 22, 2000 · Issue 93

Background
Born
July 22, 1822, Heinzendorf, in the Silesia region of Austria, now part of the
Czech Republic

Position
Monk and then abbott from 1868 Institute/Company Brünn Monastery, Austria

Biography Johann Mendel grew up the son of a peasant farmer in Austria. The
discoveries he made could have been no more distant from the rumblings of the
steam-driven Industrial Revolution taking place in the great cities of Europe
than if he had been born in Papua, New Guinea. At age 21, he entered a
monastery and settled into the life of a monk - praying, teaching, and tending
the monastery's small botanical garden. It was his digging in the garden there
that was to lead to a discovery that would revolutionize our understanding of
life itself and ultimately bring us, almost a century and a half later, to a
new industry - biotechnology.

Died January 6, 1884, Brünn, Austria, now Brno, Czech Republic

Full text:
http://news.bmn.com/hmsbeagle/93/notes/biofeed

On Tue, 2 Jan 2001 09:52:32 -0000
"Ian Pitchford" <ian.pitchford@...> wrote:

>NEW YORK TIMES
>January 2, 2001  Single-Page Format
>A CONVERSATION WITH / Anne Fausto-Sterling
>Exploring What Makes Us Male or Female
>By CLAUDIA DREIFUS
[...]
>Full text:
>http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/02/science/02CONV.html

I read the full article and was amazed by a number of
statements.

First:
"When people say `it's nurture' or
it's nature' in making us male or
female, I take the middle ground
and say that it's a combination of
both," she said. "That's not a
popular position to take in today's
academic environment, but it is the
one that makes the most sense."

What is amazing here is the claim that both nature and
nurture contribute to development is "not a popular
position." I would claim that the opposite is true:
virtually every academic would say that both nature
and nurture contribute to making us male and female.

In contrast, I see myself as part of a minority of
academics who finds it unfruitful to talk about
"nurture" as an Aristotelian category outside the realm
of "nature." It seems to me that any category outside
of "the natural" is part of the "supernatural" and
therefore of no scientific interest.

Next:
"I think gay men also face a particularly difficult
psychological situation because they are seen as
embracing something hated in our culture — the feminine"
and "Gay women, on the other hand, are seen as, rightly
or wrongly, embracing something our culture values
highly — masculinity."

I was amazed by two points here. First, given that
gay men and women can be found across the entire
range of traditional femininity and masculinity, who
exactly sees gay men and women as "embracing"
either masculinity or femininity? Second, does our
whole culture really hate everything about femininity
and value everything about masculinity? Personally,
I value certain aspects and dislike other aspects of
both masculinity and femininity in myself and in
others, and I'd bet most people feel the same.

Third:
"The best controlled studies performed to measure
genetic contributions to homosexuality say that 50
percent of what goes into making a person homosexual
is genetic. That means 50 percent is not."

To say that 50% of the variance in sexual orientation
in a population can be explained by genetic variance
does not logically translate into saying that "50
percent of what goes into making a person homosexual
is genetic." I am amazed when academics apply
population percentages from behavioral genetics to
the level of individual persons.

Finally:
"Q. Why do you suppose lesbians have been less
accepting than gay men about genetics as the
explanation for homosexuality?

A. I think most lesbians have more of a sense of the cultural component in
making us who we are. If you look at many lesbians' life histories, you will
often find extensive heterosexual experiences. They often feel they've
made a choice. "

I am first of all amazed by the suggestion that
lesbians have some sort of ESP that allows them
to perceive cultural influences that gay men
fail to perceive. Second, I am amazed by the
suggestion that any individual chooses his or
her own sexual orientation. We may choose how
to act upon our attractions, but I cannot imagine
how it could be possible to choose one's likes
and dislikes.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
John A. Johnson <j5j@...>
Professor of Psychology, Pennsylvania State University
http://www.personal.psu.edu/~j5j/public_html/
My views do not necessarily reflect the official views of Penn State.
Penn State is not responsible for my behavior. Nor am I for the university's.

> NEW YORK TIMES
> January 2, 2001  Single-Page Format
> Researcher Challenges a Host of Psychological Studies
> By ERICA GOODE
>
> Here is the problem, as Dr. Linda Bartoshuk sees it: Say that two men, call
> them Richard and John, are both suffering from depression, and a researcher
> wants to find out if a particular medication will offer them relief.
>
> Asked to rate the intensity of his depression on a scale of 1 to 10, Richard
> selects a 6. John, given the same rating scale, also picks a 6. But does he
> feel the same degree of depression as John?
> ...
> And therein lies an error that compromises many psychological studies, she
> believes, perhaps calling their findings into question.

Anyone who has taken an introductory course in psychological
measurement should be familiar with these issues, but it is
indeed true that much research, especially in medicine, is done
by people who are oblivious to measurement problems. For a more
technical discussion, see the Measurement Theory FAQ at
ftp://ftp.sas.com/pub/neural/measurement.html

--

Warren S. Sarle       SAS Institute Inc.   The opinions expressed here
saswss@...    SAS Campus Drive     are mine and not necessarily
(919) 677-8000        Cary, NC 27513, USA  those of SAS Institute.

As discussed in its original context, I sometimes think that opinions about the Hawthorne Effect become ways of debating deeper issues concerning philosophies of management and and ideologies.

I have attached one summary article about the Hawthorne effect you may find interesting..

Fredric Weizmann wrote:

http://faculty.ncwc.edu/toconnor/417/417lect05.htm

---

THE HUMAN RELATIONS MOVEMENT
(circa 1929-1951)

Without much doubt, the father of the "human relations" movement, aka the "social man" era, "democratic management", or "participative management" is Elton Mayo (1880-1949), a Harvard professor trained in psychopathology who is most famous for the well-known "Hawthorne Studies", a 20-year experiment at a Western Electric plant in Cicero, Illinois.

The "Hawthorne Effect" is the name given to the 112% increase in output by workers who perceive that they are being studied somehow. Mayo and his good-looking male research assistants let the almost all-female group of workers at the Hawthorne plant think they were studying the effects of lighting on productivity. They found that output increased even when the lighting levels were decreased, even when salaries were adjusted downward, and even when worker complaints were ignored. By a process of elimination, the only explanation left was the attention Mayo and his assistants were paying to the workers.

Over the years, managers have used the Hawthorne Effect successfully for quick gains in productivity by implementing self-study committees, announcing surprise audits, establishing task forces of various kinds, and in general, keeping the workers tied up with busy-work that has the appearance of ongoing research.

Mayo stated that the reason workers are motivated by such things is that individuals have a deep psychological need to believe that their organization cares about them, is open, concerned, and willing to listen. The sociological implications are that the human dimensions of work (group relations) exert a tremendous influence on behavior, overriding the organizational norms and even the individual's own self-interests. The discoveries of "social capacity", "informal work groups", and "employee-centered management" were nothing short of revolutionary for administrative thought.

The "Cult of Mayoism" became the predominant management philosophy in its day, as administrators everywhere sought to re-train their supervisors to play the role that Mayo's assistants played. This led to the establishment of "management retreats" where managers engaged in Rogerian therapies, Maslowian therapies, sensitivity training, Parent-Adult-Child training, and other forms of group dynamics to become more employee-centered.

SOME BASIC IDEAS OF MAYOISM

1. Supervisors should not act like supervisors - they should be friends, counselors to the workers
2. Managers should not try to micro-manage the organization by an overriding concern for product or job quality at the expense of the macro-social, or humanistic, characteristics of work
3. People should be periodically asked how they feel about the work, their supervisors, and co-workers
4. Humanistic supervision plus morale equals productivity
5. Those who don't respond to group influence should be treated with sarcasm
6. Workers should be involved or at least consulted before any change in the organization
7. Employees who leave should be exit-interviewed - turnover should be kept to a minimum

CRITICISMS OF MAYOISM

Mayoism was criticized on several grounds, most of which revolved around the charge it was "Cow psychology" (Contented Cows Give More Milk). It was a bit too idealistic in trying to remove any form of conflict from the organization, a bit too evangelistic in trying to save the world, and it excused much immaturity and irresponsibility among the workers. Two of the harshest CRITICS were March & Simon (1958) Organizations NY:John Wiley and Charles Lindblom (1959) "The Science of Muddling Through" Public Administration Review 19: 79-88.

March & Simon (1958) called Mayoism the "garbage-can model" of decision-making because it was basically irrational and seemed to offer a garbage can full of easy answers. March & Simon themselves were critics of perfect rationality, and gave us such terms as "bounded rationality" and "satisfycing" to explain the kinds of things managers have to settle for. In criminal justice, for example, we often have to settle for less than individualized justice (a policy to not investigate crimes involving less than $1000 in property) because of the need to satisfice the demands between goals of the organization and efficient uses of humanpower.

Charles Lindblom (1959) also studied the process of limited rationality, and said that Mayoism can't figure out how to sort out and value-rank competing employee needs related to a particular problem. Therefore, it results in an incremental (slow, step-by-step) approach to innovation because the manager must act on compromises.

---

SELECTED FOLLOWERS OF MAYOISM

Keith Davis (1940s & 1950s) was a human relations specialist ("Mr. Human Relations") who tried to apply Mayoism to law enforcement agencies by preaching about such things as job enlargement and job enrichment which only had the effect of generating public interest in policing as a career.

Chris Argyris (~1957) was a social science researcher who advocated a type of participant-observation research based on Hawthorne Effect-like principles, i.e., involving your research subjects in designing the way in which survey questions are worded and how concepts should be operationally defined and measured. He founded a management theory called "Immaturity-Maturity Theory" which is based on an organic model of organizations as living, happy beings, and requiring managers to be babysitters at times and reality therapists at other times.

Fred Herzberg (~1959) founded "Motivation-Hygiene Theory" which is based on 5 types of "satisfiers" and 5 types of "dissatisfiers" in organizations, with hygiene factors being the dissatisfiers and motivators being the satisfiers. People, in their attribution style, are either hygiene-seekers or motivator-seekers, in which case they are driven by changes in job context or job content, respectively. Hygiene-seekers let the organization down when their talents are most needed. Perhaps the following chart will help to explain a complicated theory:

Hygiene Seekers:

Motivation Seekers:

Primarily dissatisfied by: 1. company policy and administration 2. supervision 3. salary 4. interpersonal relations 5. working conditions A. motivated by job context - the environment of the job B. will overreact to improvements in hygiene factors (short-term "shot-in-the-arm" boost) but will also overreact when hygiene factors not improved. C. usually a talented but cynical individual who mocks the company philosophy and top management D. realizes little satisfaction from achievements, and shows little interest in the kind of work done

Primarily satisfied by: 1. achievement 2. recognition 3. the work itself 4. responsibility 5. advancement A. motivated by job content - the nature of the task B. doesn't overreact to changes in hygiene factors, and also has short durations of satisfaction, but milder periods of dissatisfaction C. usually an overachiever who has positive feelings toward work and life in general D. profits professionally from accomplishments, and takes details of tasks seriously

Doug McGregor (1960) founded "Theory X/Theory Y Management Theory" which was inspired by Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Theory X, which McGregor calls traditional management is based on the idea employees are lazy and need to be motivated by crass, material rewards. Theory Y, which McGregor favors, is based on the idea employees are creative and need to have their potential unleashed.

Rensis Likert (1961) is famous for his continuum research scales, so-called "Likert scales" in social science research, such as /------strongly agree----agree----disagree-----strongly disagree-----/, and also for a number of studies into leadership, called the "University of Michigan studies". In general, he advocated more employee-oriented leadership and supportive management.

I am responding to the comments concerning the heritability of the placebo
effect.

A number of psychological and physical disorders have symptoms that occur
or are intensified by worry.  Worrying that one has a disorder, therefore,
can cause "real" symptoms.  Anything that persuades that no disorder is
present -- by definition, an effective placebo -- is a "real" treatment
because it reduces worry.

Studies show that anxiety has a number of components, including
sensitivity.  Anxiety sensitivity is assessed as a fear of anxiety and is
associated with a predisposition to worry about anxiety.  Some evidence
produced by psychiatrist Murray Stein suggests that anxiety sensitivity is
inherited.  If the tendency to worry, esp. the tendency to worry about
anxiety, in inherited, than so much placebo responsivity, because there
should be little or no responsivility in people who do not worry.


Steven Reiss

Announcement:

The Savanna Groves bulletin board has just been reincarnated into an
egroups mailing list & web archive.  The purpose of this unmoderated
forum is to facilitate an interpersonal real-time discussion of
evolutionary psychology and related topics.  While this group primarily
caters to non-academics, participants at every level of expertise are
encouraged to join in!

The new main page is located here:
http://www.egroups.com/group/SavannaGroves

Kind Regards,
- Erik Anderson,
     Savanna Groves list-owner

Dear Fred,
                 You may possibly be interested to have a look at the
attached page from my last book *, in which I raised the possible utility of
a polar opposite to the concept of the 'idiot savant', that of the 'savant
idiot'. I raised this idea to draw attention to the state of mind (and
ability?) of scholars who are widely recognised as being of undoubted
intelligence and learning but who at the same time hold tenaciously (in my
opinion) to one or more seemingly completely untenable ideas.
In my field, human population dynamics, the most important, destructive, and
untenable ideas are that rapid human population growth and/or excessive size
cannot cause problems, and that numbers and material throughput can increase
for ever.

All the best for 2001. Jack Parsons

* (1997) Human Population Competition ... . Two vols. Out of print. Soon to
reappear, I hope.

Ian:

Do you include these puff-pieces from, e.g., the New York Times, and the
like, on E. Fox Keller, A. Fausto-Sterling, and R. Lewontin, and the like, on
this splendid list because you think that the listmembers will profit from
the breathless views expressed, or because you think they'll learn something
worthwhile about good sources for trashing evolutionary psychology? This is
not a sarcastic or rhetorical question, but a real inquiry.

Regards,

PRG

Metaviews 001. 2001.01.02. Approximately 3294 words.

Below is the second installment in the Stages of Thought series by
Michael Barnes (see Metaviews 2000:104).  Barnes further develops his
controversial theory of cultural development based on Piaget's theory
of individual psychological development, but he does so by
disconnecting individual intelligence from cultural intelligence.  He
writes "it is not a lack of intelligence that limits primitive or
other people in their cognitive methods; it is instead the particular
history of this or that group which made it unnecessary to develop
and learn those methods."  He extends this also to a critique of the
reputed "superior" intelligence of modern humans.  "Even in
contemporary industrial societies," writes Barnes, "a person may live
a life guided mostly by the kind of thought that characterized early
primitive culture and archaic civilization.  It is commonsense
knowledge, derived from everyday experience and from tradition (what
everybody knows)."  Rather it is the culture as a whole, and not
individuals within culture, to which we must turn our attention in
order to recognize the developmental history of religion(s) and
science(s).  Barnes concludes:

"... [I]f many people today employ the method of science well, it is
not because they are more intelligent than other people.  The people
of even the most primitive society share in the same general human
intelligence.  It is the tools and training that different cultures
provide that determines which cognitive skills a given group of
people will have available to them."

In this move, Barnes avoids the critique of previous attempts to
apply Piaget and other developmental psychological models to culture.
The adults of other cultures, of course, even in so-called primitive
cultures, are in no way "children," in the manner that psychological
developmental models might otherwise suggest.

-- Billy Grassie


=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Subject: Stages of Thought
From: Michael.Barnes@...

Posting #2 (of 3) on Stages of Thought by Michael Horace Barnes.
The Plausibility of a Parallel Between Individual and Cultural Development

A.  Easier modes of thought precede harder ones (taken from pp. 8-10,
with permission of Oxford University Press).

       A major objection to the idea of a parallel between cultural and
individual development is its apparent improbability.  Piaget
described stages of cognitive (and moral) development from infancy to
adulthood.  His theory of development is concerned mainly with
children.  But every culture is dominated by adults, not children.
These adults have already had their own full history of cognitive
development.   Adult humans everywhere share in the same basic human
genetic inheritance, including the same innate intelligence.
Perhaps, as Jared Diamond argues, some indigenous people even have
higher than normal intelligence.  The highland natives of New Guinea
have often suffered from malnutrition which  might well hurt brain
development.  But, as Diamond says, this kind of harm occurs to
brains, not to genes.  Such harsh periods might also be the time when
natural conditions "select" the brightest to survive, producing
greater innate intelligence.  Certainly, as Diamond notes, the
children of New Guinea grow up today to pilot great commercial
aircraft and use computers well.

       Diamond may or may not be correct about the innate intellectual
superiority of natives of New Guinea.  But the general point remains:
Strong innate human intelligence is everywhere evident in the world.
It therefore seems difficult to make sense of a claim that
differences in cognitive style among cultures are parallel to
differences in individual cognitive development, from childhood
onward.  It is easy to suspect that such parallels appear only to a
Western mind biased in favor of habits of thought familiar in the
Western industrialized nations.  It also evokes outdated nineteenth
century theories that justified oppressive colonialism. It echoes
wild Hegelian speculation about laws of history.  It would help
alleviate suspicion of bias  if it were at least initially plausible
that something so odd could occur as a parallel between individual
cognitive development and the sequence of cognitive styles in culture.

       In fact there is a fairly simple explanation of how this
parallel could occur, an explanation that does not require any deep
laws to historical development, an explanation that does not claim
that the people of any one culture are more intelligent than those of
another.  This explanation has two main components.   The first is
that an easier style or method of thought is mastered more quickly
and thoroughly than difficult ones.  As a general rule, the cognitive
tasks a young child can master are simpler than those that an
adolescent can master, which in turn are simpler than those only a
young adult can master.   Grade school, high school, and college
teachers experience this repeatedly.  The same sequence of tasks
seems to appear in the history of a culture's development. Cultures
first learn the easier skills; the harder ones take longer to master.

       The second is that, as both Lev Vygotsky and Kieran Egan have
argued, at least some of the more difficult thought that humans
engage in does not come naturally, as we say, but requires a cultural
context which has first created or adopted new and more difficult
cognitive techniques, and which then schools and rewards people for
learning to use this more difficult kind of thought.  For about the
first twenty five thousand years of human history many of the
cognitive tools we now take for granted did not exist. The more
difficult cognitive tools often required the prior creation of
special cognitive technology, like writing or formal logic, and then
also required the creation of social institutions such as years of
formal schooling or tutoring, to train some people to become adept in
the use of this cognitive technology.

       Through our own long years of formal schooling we have become
used to many difficult cognitive tools.  Because we no longer
recognize the subtlety or sophistication of methods to which we have
become accustomed, we are tempted to think, mistakenly, that the
people of any culture could readily use those methods if they wanted,
without long periods of careful training.  Then we conclude that to
announce the absence of certain methods in a culture is to somehow
insult the people of that culture, as though they had to be of
limited intelligence not to do what we take for granted. To repeat
once again: it is not a lack of intelligence that limits primitive or
other people in their cognitive methods; it is instead the particular
history of this or that group which made it unnecessary to develop
and learn those methods.

       If the context of the culture does not place certain pressures
on it, the culture may never find a need to develop or adopt certain
skills in the first place.  A primitive community will find little
need to invent or learn 'long' division, for example.  In China it
took centuries to develop the classics to which Confucius appealed,
and more centuries to develop traditions of analyzing those classics.
In India centuries of orally transmitted ritual songs  preceded the
written Vedas and then the major Upanishads and their philosophical
reflections.  In Egypt centuries of use built up a body of geometric
practices, which Greek thinkers then formalized into a system.

       Confucian classics and Vedic commentaries and formal geometry
represent progress if one values such things.  Whether those values
are valid is not easy to address briefly.  It may well be that the
stages of development, from pre-classical to classical, from
pre-algebraic to algebraic, from anything to anything else, are
regressive rather than progressive, according to a person who places
high value on relative simplicity and closeness to nature.  But the
pattern of development may well be there, whether any of us find it
valuable or not.  The historical chapters, three to eight, will
attempt to establish what in fact has occurred in the development of
several cultures.  I value those developments, as it happens.  But if
I am wrong on the value of what has occurred, I still may be correct
on what in fact has occurred.  That can be judged at least partly on
the basis of the information and argument in this book.

B.  Thought stages are cumulative, and vary from person to person in
a culture (from pp. 30-33).

       The idea of cultural development would seem to imply that people
of a given culture tend to think alike.  Primitive people think like
primitives; modern people think like moderns.  But in fact within our
own culture different people use different styles of thought, and a
given person may use more than one.  Even in contemporary industrial
societies a person may live a life guided mostly by the kind of
thought that characterized early primitive culture and archaic
civilization.  It is commonsense knowledge, derived from everyday
experience and from tradition (what everybody knows). It is the
"bookkeeping" style of thought--collections of ideas assembled and
used without explicit concern to test for overall logical coherence
among them all or to be critically aware of the conditional nature of
the evidence and the interpretation they represent.  On a day to day
basis we are all mostly pre-theoretical and pre-critical, relying
primarily on tradition and common sense observations with a little ad
hoc logic applied as needed.

       Even fantasy-loving pre-operational style of thought is common
enough today.   Wild beliefs in a disconnected jumble of ideas are
evident in supermarket tabloids like the Weekly World News, with its
tales of UFO aliens and Tibetan secrets for raising the dead to life.
The New Age movement promotes many odd beliefs, in ESP, plant
consciousness, or mood-altering crystals,  odd enough for
psychologists to refer to them as magical thinking. Whether "magical"
is the best label or not, there is a tendency here to believe things
that appeal to the imagination regardless of lack of any rational
support.

       Those modern Americans whose thought is most "magical" perform
on psychological tests as just barely formal operational, passing
tests for the kind of early formal operational thought used by
fourteen year olds, but failing more difficult tests.  These adults
may have very good memories for recounting information from many
sources, but show little critical ability to distinguish between a
reliable source and an unreliable one. Many are good at imagining a
worthwhile story for their lives, but are not very good at taking a
rationally objective survey of their own situation and habits and
goals, and putting it in the larger context of hypothetical
alternatives open to them. A mixture of pre-operational credence and
concrete operational practicality, in other words, is common among
modern adults.  It should not be surprising if these same adults
entertain rather fantastic beliefs, giving uncritical credence to
beliefs about demonic possession, about ancient visitors from outer
space, or about voices from the past speaking through living
"channels."

       Concrete operational thought is the ordinary mode of thought for
most of us most of the time.  So it is not surprising that it appears
today also in explicitly religious forms   The sociologist Robert
Wuthnow describes religious fundamentalism as part of "folk piety,"
and his description matches quite well, even if unintentionally, with
the concrete operational style of thought.  Folk piety  is based on
personal experience rather than formal arguments.  It is composed of
relatively discrete sayings, a set of independent parts gathered but
not organized into a coherent unity.  It is "a symbol system
comprised of a relatively large number of elements, but with a low
number of definite relations among pairs of elements."  It is focused
on solidarity groups and its oral tradition.  This is the style of
thought that dominates by default in archaic cultures.  This is also
fairly normal human thinking in most cultures today including our own.

       Like other cultures in history, however, ours has also taught
most people how to use at least a little of the systematic formal
operational style of thought that began to predominate among the
cognitive elite in some cultures about 2500 years ago in what Jaspers
called the axial-age. High school geometry is an instance of this.
So also is any attempt to invent and choose among alternative forms
for a year-long budget, figuring in taxes and retirement savings and
insurance costs and future schooling for the kids with contingency
plans for emergencies, all in relation to long term goals and perhaps
even religious or philosophical interpretations of life, in order to
bring some overall coherence to it all.

       When a person does employ large-scale formal operational
analyses, explicitly rethinking even the basic structures of the
person's life or of the universe, the person can do this because
prior generations have demonstrated that this mode of thought is
available if a person works at it, and because those prior
generations have developed cognitive techniques for such thought.
Prior generations practiced how to review previous laws, beliefs,
theories of nature, or whatever; then to look for large-scale ways of
re-interpreting them; and then to test these large-scale
interpretations for inner coherence.  They have handed on organized
methods of logic, pro-and-con styles of argumentation, structured
outlines for interrelating ideas.  People learn these techniques in
schooling, both formal and informal.

       In spite of such education, however, these methods of classical
consciousness are difficult and are used only occasionally or only by
a relative few.  Systematically logical theorizing has its impact by
being gradually imported into the underlying structures of the
culture, its government and ethical codes and ideals, not by being
common daily practice.  Our ideal of equal and universal justice
under a government of laws, for example, is an ideal people respect
in theory but have a hard time living up to.  People often respect
such ideals because they receive them as tradition and treat them as
common sense, rather than because they derive them logically from
their own coherently systematic reflections, say, on the nature of
the person as a social being in history, or as a child of God who is
part of a cosmic Providential plan.  Similarly, it has long been
noted that while formal theologies often portray God in rather
philosophically sophisticated ways, anthropomorphic images of God are
probably more common among religious people.  And most religious
people accept these images on the basis of authority, whether of
religious leaders or sacred scripture or well-established tradition,
rather than because they have done the relevant rational theology or
philosophy themselves.

       The empirical-critical cognitive style of modern science also
appears in various forms, from simple to sophisticated.   We can
presume that from primitive times people did a bit of what science
does.  They asked questions about things, formulated theories to
account for things and then checked up on whether the theories fit
with the evidence, remaining often only partly convinced.  There is a
sense in which each person incorporates into daily life a skepticism
which trusts evidence only so far.  The difference between primitive
and modern culture is not that people today are the first to have
discovered the possibility of formulating theories and testing them.
Modern scientific culture has taken two exceedingly important
additional steps.  It explicitly recognizes the need to formulate
theories much more precisely and logically than is the custom in
primitive and archaic cultures;  and it does the testing much more
rigorously and extensively than in classical cultures.  Modern
scientific culture has formalized an everyday human process into a
highly self-conscious method.

       In practice, of course, not even the best trained scientist
follows a neat pattern of observation and theorizing and testing.
The path of discovery is convoluted, cris-crossing itself through
many blind alleys along the way.  But the general method of science
is eventually to organize the experiences of the journey into data
(observations), theories, and tests in order then to be able to check
more clearly how reliable the conclusions are so far.  This general
method is no longer just an incidental and unschooled approach of
this person or that, but is now the formal ideal behind complex
techniques for determining what is probably true.  This is the method
that has proved to be so challenging to religious belief, both by
calling certain specific beliefs into question and by relying on a
semi-skeptical method that has turned out to be highly successful.

       Once again, if many people today employ the method of science
well, it is not because they are more intelligent than other people.
The people of even the most primitive society share in the same
general human intelligence.  It is the tools and training that
different cultures provide that determines which cognitive skills a
given group of people will have available to them.  (Chapter nine
deals at length with the topic of the method of science, addressing
issues raised by current philosophy and sociology and history of
science.)

C.  Addressing the Critics.

       The second chapter of Stages of Thought, entitled "Addressing
the Critics," is devoted to several specific challenges:  1) to all
theories of cultural evolution; 2) to Piagetian descriptions of
individual cognitive development; and 3) to specifically Piagetian
theories of cultural evolution.  The information and analyses in this
chapter are too complex and varied to summarize here.  But at least
this brief mention of the chapter must be made at this point, because
it would otherwise be easy to assume that criticisms of Piaget and of
cultural evolution already won the day long ago.   The chapter
particularly identifies ways in which opponents of theories of
cultural evolution and of Piagetian thought end up themselves giving
credence to these ideas in spite of their intent not to.

        This chapter, quite frankly, is a bit tedious.  The reader who
is already convinced that cultures have evolved approximately as
Parsons or Gellner or Peacock or Diamond claim, or who thinks that
Piaget's general outline of cognitive development is correct, can
profitably skip those sections.   It may nonetheless be worthwhile to
look at the third part of the chapter, which describes and responds
to attacks by Richard Shweder and others to Piagetian theories of
cultural evolution.

       Shweder is a good representative of those who emphasize cultural
differences, who severely criticize cross-cultural frameworks for
understanding human thought and behavior.  Nonetheless, Shweder
himself ends up acknowledging developmental differences.  He just
claims to find them not very important.  Here is one paragraph from
Stages of Thought (p. 49) illustrating what I mean:

       "Perhaps one of the most significant statements by Shweder in
favor of a theory of cultural cognitive evolution, albeit indirectly
and apparently unintentionally, is a statement made as part of his
argument that modern people are poor at formal operational thought.
He cites a 1965 study to examine how well college students could
correlate material, in this case between cloud-seeding and rainfall.
When the information was presented bit by bit in sequence, the
students did very poorly at determining whether there was a
significant correlation between the seeding and rainfall.  But when
the information was summed up in a 2 X 2 table, a much greater number
of the students were able to reason through the problem and come up
with a valid answer.  Shweder cites this as evidence that people can
have the capacity to think in certain ways but be unable to use that
capacity well without certain cognitive tools such as a 2 X 2
contingency table, a tool which he calls 'certainly a formal
operational instrument.'  This is an excellent example of what
constitutes cultural cognitive evolution: the development of new
cognitive tools and a process of educating people in their use.
Tools like literacy, list-making, memory techniques, rhetoric,
categories for analyzing drama, 2 X 2 tables, musical notation, and
so forth, have to be developed.  The development of such tools has
taken thousands of years.  The tools must in turn be taught to each
new generation, so methods of teaching complex cognitive tools also
have evolved over centuries."  (P. 49)

Next posting, third of three: an overview of the historical chapters
on the evolution of cognitive methods and its concurrent effect on
religious thought and science.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
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What Is Evolutionary Psychology: Explaining the New Science of the Mind
(Darwinism Today)
by Leda Cosmides, John Tooby, Helena Cronin (Editor), Oliver Curry (Editor)
This item will be published in January 2001. You may order it now and we will
ship it to you when it arrives.
Hardcover - 64 pages (January 2001)
Yale Univ Pr; ISBN: 0300083092
AMAZON - US
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0300083092/darwinanddarwini/
AMAZON - UK
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0300083092/humannaturecom/

Book Description

The human mind, according to the exciting new discipline called evolutionary
psychology, was designed by natural selection to solve the problems faced by
our hunter-gatherer ancestors. In this book, two pioneers in the field explain
evolutionary psychology, its main findings and conclusions, and its agenda for
future research. They show how this powerful approach can change the way we
look at reasoning, emotions, motivation, and other mysteries of human nature.
Darwinism Today Series Editors: Helena Cronin and Oliver Curry

From the Inside Flap

There really is a universal human nature, and the aim of evolutionary
psychology is to discover it. According to this bold new approach, the mind was
designed by natural selection to solve the problems faced by our
hunter-gatherer ancestors. As a result, it is no blank slate. The mind is a
collection of tools, each specialized for solving a different ancestral
problem. From recognizing faces to falling in love, or acquiring a language to
reciprocating favors, evolutionary psychology is at last unraveling the mystery
of what it means to be human.Here two pioneers of the field, Leda Cosmides and
John Tooby, explain the science behind the headlines. They outline the
intellectual framework of this exciting new discipline, describe its main
findings and conclusions, and set out an agenda for future research. The result
is a powerful and pervasive perspective on the evolution of human nature, which
changes how we look at reasoning, the emotions, motivation, and even
aesthetics.

About the Author

Leda Cosmides and John Tooby codirect the Center for Evolutionary Psychology
and are professors of psychology and anthropology at the University of
California, Santa Barbara. They are editors of The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary
Psychology and the Generation of Culture, a book that helped launch the new
field. In 1999-2000 they were awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial
Fellowship.