evolutionary thought in psychology

Transcription

1 evolutionary thought in psychology A Brief History HENRY PLOTKIN

2

3 evolutionary thought in psychology: A Brief History

4 Blackwell Brief Histories of Psychology The Blackwell Brief Histories of Psychology offer concise, accessible, and lively accounts of key topics within psychology, such as emotion, intelligence, and stress, that have had a profound effect on psychological and cultural life. The books in this series provide a rich sense of historical context while remaining grounded in contemporary issues and research that will be of interest to both academic and general readers. Stress: A Brief History Cary L. Cooper and Philip Dewe Evolutionary Thought in Psychology: A Brief History Henry Plotkin Emotions: A Brief History Keith Oatley Intelligence: A Brief History Robert J. Sternberg and Anna T. Cianciolo

5 evolutionary thought in psychology A Brief History HENRY PLOTKIN

6 ß 2004 by Henry Plotkin 350 Main Street, Malden, MA , USA 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK 550 Swanston Street, Carlton, Victoria 3053, Australia The right of Henry Plotkin to be identified as the Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except as permitted by the UK Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988, without the prior permission of the publisher. First published 2004 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Plotkin, H. C. (Henry C.) Evolutionary thought in psychology : a brief history / Henry Plotkin. p. cm. (Blackwell brief histories of psychology ; 2) Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN (hbk : alk. paper) ISBN (pbk : alk. paper) 1. Evolutionary psychology History. I. Title. II. Series. BF P dc A catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library. Set in 10/12pt Book Antique by Kolam Information Services Pvt. Ltd, Pondicherry, India Printed and bound in the United Kingdom by TJ International, Padstow, Cornwall For further information on Blackwell Publishing, visit our website:

7 In memory of my parents

8

9 Contents Preface ix CHAPTER 1 CURIOUS HISTORIES 1 CHAPTER 2 BEFORE DARWIN 9 Preliminaries 10 Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck 20 Herbert Spencer 24 CHAPTER 3 PSYCHOLOGY BORN AND THE DARWINIAN REVOLUTION 28 The New Science of Mind 28 The Darwinian Revolution 33 Darwin s Immediate Successors 38 Early Psychology in the United States 44 CHAPTER 4 THE NEAR DEATH OF DARWINISM IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES 48 Evolution after Darwin 48 Behaviorism Takes Hold in Psychology 53 The Rise of Cultural Anthropology 62 CHAPTER 5 AN EXCEPTIONAL CASE 70 The Fundamental Problem 71 A New Factor in Evolution 77 Evolutionary Epistemology 83 Fall and Decline 88

10 vi CONTENTS CHAPTER 6 LESSONS TO BE LEARNED: ETHOLOGY AND SOCIOBIOLOGY 90 Classical Ethology 91 Sociobiology 105 CHAPTER 7 CONTEMPORARY EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY 123 Evolutionary Theory from Necessary Precursors in the Main Discipline 129 Evolutionary Psychology Reborn 134 Which Side is Bringing Science into Disrepute? 148 A Natural Science of Culture 154 CHAPTER 8 FUTURE PROSPECTS 158 References 162 Index 166

11 Preface Charles Darwin knew that extending the theory of evolution to a science of the human mind was an exercise of supreme importance. It took decades for this to be done with any kind of conceptual competence, and about a century was to pass before psychology itself came to understand that a science of mind without an evolutionary perspective is incomplete. This is a history of those early fumbled attempts, the banishment of evolution along with virtually all theory by the shameful rise and reign over significant swathes of psychology of behaviorism and its accompanying hard-line empiricist stance with regard to the assumed unbounded nature of human faculties, the inevitable rise of evolutionary thinking in the study of animal behavior, and its final incorporation within a defensible framework into a science of the human mind itself. Whilst the book traces the history of the slow struggle to achieve Darwin s ambition, two things must be made clear at the outset to the reader. This book is not a history of the evolutionary psychology of the last twenty years or so, and nor is it a survey of contemporary evolutionary psychology. The systematic analysis of psychological process and mechanism from an evolutionary perspective, and its accompanying empirical program, is very recent too recent for an historical account. It is simply impossible to know with certainty what will prove to be the important and enduring concepts and findings and what are the trivial, if sensational. In exactly the same way as it would have been impossible in the period around to have predicted how either evolutionary biology or psychology as individual sciences would develop over the decades to follow on the basis of work and thought of the previous twenty years when both were born as new sciences, so it is not possible to pronounce beyond an informed

12 x PREFACE guess as to what kinds of evolutionary ideas and what forms of empirical studies will be dominating in 2020 as a result of how evolutionary psychology looks today. What is certain is that evolutionary thinking in psychology is here to stay and will prove significant, but precisely how is not the concern of this book. So what is presented in the following pages is a broad history of evolutionary thought within psychology, and not a detailed history of evolutionary psychology itself as it has appeared over the last two decades. It should also be noted that neither is this a history of psychology, and so what would be serious omissions in a general history, for instance the Gestalt school or psychometrics, have no relevance here since they had no bearing on the incorporation of evolutionary thinking into the discipline. As will be seen, I use a principle of specific application of evolution to issues in the science of mind as the unifying theme that gives a coherence to this history. It is in the light of that principle, in combination with what were the clear initial studies in the birth of contemporary evolutionary psychology, on which chapter 7 is built. This book in general, and chapter 7 in particular, is not a comprehensive survey of contemporary evolutionary psychology. There are a dozen and more books competing in that role at present, and this is not one of those. Academic writing is too often its own worst enemy. The detailed naming of names with accompanying dates is avoided within the main text. A brief listing of relevant references on a chapter by chapter basis is given at the end of the book, and I have tried where possible to keep those references friendly and available rather than forbidding tracts buried in obscure journals. If there is any single scholarly work that people should go to if my humble efforts succeed in arousing interest, it is to Robert J. Richards magnificent Darwin and the Emergence of Evolutionary Theories of Mind and Behavior. My thanks to Phyllis Wentworth who first interested me in the idea of writing this brief history. I am also grateful for the guidance of Christine Cardone of Blackwell. Gillian Brown, Robin Dunbar, Celia Heyes, David Hull, Kevin Laland, and George Mandler read one or more chapters. Phyllis Wentworth read the entire manuscript. I am indebted to them for their generosity and kindness in doing so, and for their comments

13 PREFACE xi and corrections. Any errors, waywardness, or serious omissions, are, of course, to be laid at my door and not theirs. London September 2003

14

15 CHAPTER ONE Curious Histories The Greek geographer and astronomer Ptolemy proposed around 150 A.D. that the Earth is the center of the universe. Based on the notion that a circle is a perfect form, together with what was then known about astronomical cycles, the Ptolemaic model conceived of the moon, the sun, the planets apart from the Earth, and all of the stars, as being in circular orbits around our planet. This view held for almost one-and-a-half thousand years. But as astronomical observation improved and accumulated the idea of circles within circles with the Earth at the center began to seem less certain. Nicolaus Copernicus, polymathic Polish adviser to governments and Popes, had pondered upon the Ptolemaic conception for decades whilst contemplating reform of the calendar. Copernicus was bothered both by the complexity of Ptolemy s scheme and the seeming inaccuracies of astronomical observation when mapped onto the Ptolemaic model. One possible solution to the failure of the observations to match the model well was to consider the model wrong, and Copernicus began to conjecture about the possibility that the Sun, not the Earth, was the center of all things. He developed a simple scheme, still based on circular orbits (Kepler later corrected this with elliptical orbits), which seemed to fit better with the astronomical data. Such data, however, were observations made with the naked eye and difficult to quantify with any accuracy. Copernicus knew that in offering an alternative model to that of Ptolemy he was playing with fire. The sixteenth century in Europe was a dangerous time to say or write anything that went against the teachings of the Church. Doing so risked torture on the rack or burning at the stake. He died of natural causes soon after he published his ideas and so was spared such a fate.