The ID Report
Post details: The "just-so" stories of evolutionary psychology
01/25/10
The "just-so" stories of evolutionary psychology
by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent
David Warren is a Canadian journalist who writes for the Ottawa Citizen. He often expresses skepticism about Darwinism. Here he reflects on the "just-so" story usually used to explain Darwinian evolution:
The account of the Beginning of the Armadilloes, in the High and Far-Off Times -- and on the banks of the turbid Amazon -- is especially instructive. It supplies a theory of the convergent evolution of the clever armadillo, from the Stickly-Prickly Hedgehog and/or his friend the Slow-Solid Tortoise, under the ministrations of the Painted Jaguar.Consulting it today, I realize that my skepticism toward the dogmas of neo-Darwinism might well originate from that story. It is not that I prefer Kipling's account of the origin of species, which was a quite intentional (and very amusing) farce. Rather, that it spared me from developing a taste for quite unintentional farces.
In logic, a "just-so story" is known as the "ad hoc fallacy." The Latin means "for this," and it applies to any "pourquoi" explanation of things, given for the express purpose of supporting an otherwise unprovable hypothesis.
The perfect example would be the whole pseudo-science of "evolutionary psychology," which seeks to explain why man is the way he is, by means of evolutionary plausibilities. We start from the hypothesis that everything in nature, as Darwin says, adapts exclusively to the end of survival. And then we return to the same place, by a logical circle.
Here are more of Warren's columns on this subject. (The first one begins with a reader's letter on one of his columns.)
Here are more stories on evolutionary psychology.
Toronto-based Canadian journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of the multiple award-winning By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy. She was named CBA Canada's Recommended Author of the Year in 2005 and is co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of The Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientist's case for the existence of the soul (Harper 2007).
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