Contemporary Evolutionary Theory Research Articles

JOHN RAE: UGLY DUCKLING OR BLACK SWAN?

Contemporary economics is regarded as being in a state of crisis. Many of the new directions in economics are fully consistent with the Scottish political economy tradition. An under-appreciated name in the Scottish tradition is John Rae (1796-1872). As well as making important contributions to the theories of capital and interest, Rae had an important influence on Thorstein Veblen and American institutionalist thought. Joseph Schumpeter was also strongly influenced by Rae and, through Schumpeter, Rae has influenced contemporary evolutionary theory of economic change. Rae represents an important Scottish political economy tradition, quite distinct from that of Adam Smith. Copyright 1990 by Scottish Economic Society.

Précis ofVaulting Ambition: Sociobiology and the Quest for Human Nature

AbstractThe debate about the credentials of sociobiology has persisted because scholars have failed to distinguish the varieties of sociobiology and because too little attention has been paid to the details of the arguments that are supposed to support the provocative claims about human social behavior. I seek to remedy both deficiencies. After analysis of the relationships among different kinds of sociobiology and contemporary evolutionary theory, I attempt to show how some of the studies of the behavior of nonhuman animals meet the methodological standards appropriate to evolutionary research. I contend that the efforts of E. O. Wilson, Richard Alexander, Charles Lumsden, and others to generate conclusions about human nature are flawed, both because they apply evolutionary ideas in an unrigorous fashion and because they use dubious assumptions to connect their evolutionary analyses with their conclusions. This contention rests on analyses of many of the major sociobiological proposals about human social behavior, including: differences in sex roles, racial hostility, homosexuality, conflict between parents and adolescent offspring, incest avoidance, the avunculate, alliances in combat, female infanticide, and gene–culture coevolution.Vaulting Ambitionthus seeks to identify what is good in sociobiology, to expose the errors of premature speculations about human nature, and to prepare the way for serious study of the evolution of human social behavior.

Adoption and Fosterage in Human Societies: Adaptations or Enigmas?

The significance of the role of biological kinship in human social interactions lies at the heart of the contemporary debate over the extent to which natural selection has shaped patterns of human behavior and influenced the structure of human social organization. Some cultural anthropologists contend that there is no relationship between biological relatedness and human kinship systems, and therefore expect to find no systematic association between genetic kinship and patterns of social behavior (e.g., Sahlins 1976; Schneider 1968). At the same time, other anthropologists who have been influenced by contemporary theoretical developments in evolutionary biology, expect kinship' to have a profound impact upon the pattern of human social interactions (e.g., Irons 1979b; Durham 1979). This view derives from the theories of kin selection (Hamilton 1964) and reciprocal altruism (Trivers 1971; Axelrod and Hamilton 1981), which predict that altruistic behaviors, defined in this context as acts that increase the genetic fitness of the recipients at some cost to the donors, will be limited to close kin or reciprocating partners.2 In his influential critique of human sociobiology, Sahlins (1976) cites adoption as compelling evidence that biological kinship plays a relatively unimportant role in the patterning of human social relationships. In Oceania, the North American Arctic, and West Africa a substantial fraction of children grow up outside their natal households (Carroll 1970; Brady 1976; Guemple 1979; Goody 1982). In their adoptive or foster3 households they are nurtured, fed, clothed, housed, socialized, and educated. Adoption, which seems to involve unreciprocated altruism on behalf of genetically unrelated children, apparently violates the predictions of contemporary evolutionary theory (Sahlins 1976). However, the existence of institutions like adoption and fosterage does not necessarily negate the importance of biological kinship relationships (Alexander 1979; Silk 1980). In Oceania, for example, adoption occurs primarily among close kin, natural parents retain an active interest in their children's welfare after adoption, and competition occurs among natal and adoptive siblings over the dis-

Human communication and contemporary evolutionary theory

(1987). Human communication and contemporary evolutionary theory. Research on Language and Social Interaction: Vol. 20, Multichannel Communication Codes: Part I, pp. 79-139.

Kin Selection, Socialization, and Patriotism: An Integrating Theory

Patriotism may be interpreted as one brand of human altruism. Contemporary evolutionary theory suggests that the roots of human altruism lie in kin selection. However, patriots in contemporary large-scale societies make their patriotic sacrifices on behalf of groups that are composed predominantly of non-kin. This fact appears to call into question the view that human altruism is founded on kin selection. This article attempts to resolve the problem by linking kin recognition cues to the socialization process. The result is a theory which integrates kin selection and socialization as foundations of human altruism. Since patriotism is a noteworthy example of human altruism, and one especially relevant for political science, the theory is applied to patriotism in order to generate hypotheses about the process of patriotic socialization.

Filling Some Epistemological Gaps: New Patterns of Inference in Evolutionary Theory

Deeply held scientific beliefs, like metaphysical presumptions, color the world in their own hues, leaving in shadow questions which might be both posable and answerable under a different light. Contemporary evolutionary theory, derived from the intellectual marriage of Darwin and Mendel, is such a world view. Whatever conceptual order this intellectual union has brought, it remains true that heritable mutations and Natural Selection are processes exploring and pruning a complex tree of possibilities. The central epistemological failure of contemporary evolutionary theory, I shall argue, is that it has supplied little insight into the expected character of the possibilities which are explored. Prune though it may, selection itself cannot generate biological order, and variation can only explore. Hidden in the shadows of current theory lies the concept that the ultimate sources of order in the living world must derive from basic properties of structural or dynamical self-organization in complex molecular systems; further that an appropriate understanding of such self-organizing properties would help limit and explain the possibilities explored in evolution.