Kevin MacDonald on Evolutionary Psychology

“Evolutionary Psychology: The Really Dangerous Idea Is That It’s Wrong”
by Kevin MacDonald
from The Occidental Observer, June 14, 2009

Kevin MacDonald

Sharon Begley is at it again, flailing away at evolutionary psychology because it doesn’t fit well with her feminist, liberal agenda. This is ironic because evolutionary psychology owes its very existence to political correctness.

I remember the excitement when, as a graduate student, E. O. Wilson’s Sociobiology came on the scene. People talked about nothing else. Because of my background in philosophy and in leftist politics, I was a skeptical of sociobiology. But I was converted finally by Robert Trivers‘ evolutionary theory of sex. The basic idea is that reproduction is very costly for women because of the huge amount of time and energy involved in pregnancy, lactation, and child care. On the other hand, the basic act of reproduction for males is quite inexpensive, requiring only a small amount of time and energy. This means that in the same time period that a female could raise one child, a male could sire a huge number of offspring. Males benefit from having multiple mates because that raises the probability of their leaving many offspring, i.e., of having reproductive success.

It follows, theoretically, that a principal male motive for seeking wealth and power is gaining access to multiple sexual partners. And this has indeed been the pattern throughout the world. From Chinese emperors to African chieftains, males at the top of the social hierarchy were able to mate with many females. Most famously, Sultan Moulay Ismail (the Bloodthirsty) of Morocco sired 888 children with his many wives and concubines. This is an enormously powerful theory, and it continues to be the workhorse in the field of evolutionary psychology.

Once one starts to see the world as shaped by our evolutionary history, it’s impossible to go back. And it was impossible not to notice that sociobiology was being viciously attacked by academics like Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Lewontin, both of whom were Harvard professors associated with the far left and both of whom, as I later thought significant, were Jewish. . . . Read the rest of the article