B. The Evolutionary Perspective: On the Making of
6. Homo sapiens sapiens
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ception, counter-deception, and self-deception under varying condi- tions makes these behaviors particularly prominent among highly social species.93 For example, many species with advanced coopera- tive mechanisms-such as chimpanzees-manifest deception, counter-deception, and a deeply emotional moralistic aggression.
The institutionalized ostracism of habitual cheaters may indeed evi- dence the biological underpinnings of proto-legal systems.'
tion would necessarily be ahistorical, reasoning backwards from un- connected and narrowly contemporary conjecture.'
Second, although individual humans can inject highly abstract analysis into their behavior-governing processes, we continue to ob- serve humans engaging in specific and non-random patterns of behavior (in, for example, sexual jealousies, mate-guarding, violent confrontation, status-seeking, and offspring-obsessions) that are en- tirely consistent with patterns observable in many other species that do not share our capacity for abstract analysis."
Third, no one has yet presented argument or evidence sufficient to overcome the presumption. We have encountered nothing at all troubling in the fit between theory and data to supply the kind of Kuhnian crisis necessary to require a conclusion that modem human behavior is not influenced by natural selection. It would be thor- oughly illogical to presume, for example, that what we call human
"mind" is incompatible with the existence of important, evolutionary influences on human behavior."° Similarly, it would be wrong to pre- sume either that there cannot be both proximate and ultimate causes of human behavior or that the existence of maladaptive human be- haviors somehow disproves evolutionary influences on behavioral predispositions. Individuals of all species are more or less living fos- sils-bearing the imprint not of the current environment, but rather of the environment (technically the "environment of evolutionary adaptation" or EEA) in which currently manifested, heritable traits evolved-having proved adaptive over time.10' "Increasing fitness" is
of the principle of parsimony).
97. Moreover, for humans to establish a presumption that humans are, alone among all species, exempt from evolutionary influences on behavior would appear suspiciously
anthropocentric (not to mention arrogant and narcissistic).
98. See, e.g., DAVID M. Buss, THE EVOLUTION OF DESIRE: STRATEGIES OF HUMAN MATING (1994); MARTIN DALY & MARGO WILSON, HOMICIDE 187-219 (1988)
[hereinafter DALY & WILSON, HOMICIDE]; HELEN E. FISHER, ANATOMY OF LOVE:
THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MONOGAMY, ADULTERY, AND DIVORCE (1992); RIDLEY, supra note 65; Douglas T. Kenrick, Bridging Social Psychology and Sociobiology: The Case of Sexual Attraction, in SOCIOBIOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL SCIENCES 5 (Robert W.
Bell & Nancy J. Bell eds., 1989). Many believe, in any event, that our highly developed analytical abilities evolved as an adaptation that furthers the effectiveness of these be- haviors. See supra note 93.
99. See generally THOMAS S. KUHN, THE STRUCTURE OF SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTIONS 66-91 (2d ed. 1970) (elaborating the now well-known idea that some shifts in scientific frameworks (paradigms) follow the perception of anomalies (crises)).
100. One could not, in any event, reason from the supposition that some important human behaviors were not subject to evolutionary pressures to the conclusion that no important human behaviors are so subject.
101. Rapid environmental changes can dramatically outpace a species' slow adapta- tion. Thus, the fact that humans have completely (and almost instantaneously-in
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not in itself a conscious, psychological goal. Rather, psychological processes, reflected in emotions and information-processing patterns, evolved as means to the end of fitness in the social and material envi- ronments of evolutionary adaptation. 2 Some of these remain adaptive when social and material conditions change, and some do not.
Fourth, a prevalent competing hypothesis, that all relevant hu- man behavior is socially constructed, exhibits several glaring weaknesses. 3 It is environmentally deterministic, for example, and is therefore as incoherent as would be a genetically deterministic the- ory. That hypothesis also requires a theory (to date unarticulated and suspiciously bootstrapping) that could explain the process by which a species could evolve beyond the influence of the processes that shaped it. That, in turn, requires that one posit the improb- able-a precise moment in history at which time either: a) a living organism forever nullified the effects of its own genotype; or b) an organism with evolved behavioral predispositions had an offspring without behavioral predispositions.
Consequently, and with knowledge of evolutionary processes, one may expect that humans would behave in many ways that they do even without their higher reasoning capabilities. One may expect, for example, that humans on average will devote extraordinary energy to sex and child-rearing activities, will allocate attentions differently to kin and non-kin, will exhibit sex differences in behavior, will exhibit aggression in non-random patterns, will have psychological/emotional reactions that would have furthered reproductive success during an environment of evolutionary adaptation, will cooperate and defect from cooperation in patterns consistent with game-theory, and so on.
And in fact, results of numerous experiments and studies in human
evolutionary time) altered the environments within which they live, says exactly nothing about whether or not particular behaviors, even if maladaptive within those environ- ments, remain influenced by past selection. We would not think to argue, for example, that a predisposition toward sweet (and hence high-calorie) foods is not genetically influ- enced merely because our nearly unlimited access to modem refined sugars make such cravings arguably maladaptive. See Martin Daly & Margo Wilson, Anti-Science and the Pre-Darwinian Image of Mankind, 93 AM. ANTHROPOLOGIST 162, 163-64 (1991)
[hereinafter Daly & Wilson, Anti-Science]; Low, supra note 16, at 42-43. Moreover, there will always be creatures that behave in maladaptive ways (through conscious choice or otherwise). Natural selection does not prevent such things from occurring, it only pre- vents them from becoming the norm for long periods of time.
102. See Daly & Wilson, Anti-Science, supra note 101, at 164.
103. For examples of additional critiques, see Lee Ellis, A Discipline in Peril: Sociol- ogy's Future Hinges on Curing Its Biophobia, 27 AM. SOCIOLOGIST 21 (1996); John Tooby & Leda Cosmides, The Psychological Foundations of Culture, in THE ADAPTED MIND, supra note 1, at 19.
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psychology precisely track the predictions of evolutionary biology.14