A Distinction and a Difference

In the course of examining options for graduate study, I have found myself sometimes surprised, often troubled, occasionally even gobstruck, by some of the assertions made by researchers in and advocates of my field of interest: evolutionary psychology.

Admittedly, insofar as the specialty that most draws my attention is held, by some, to be one well deserving of disrepute, criticisms of the broad claims of the intellectual enterprise are easily encountered. Clashes of personality, no doubt, have contributed somewhat to this, but so too, I suspect, has the rather revolutionary rhetoric of some authors: predicting, unselfconsciously, the demise of the old regime in favor of the new.

Yet, there is something deeper here. Between the argumentum ad hominem and assertions of methodological progressivism, there is, I believe, a serious science struggling to disentangle itself from the shadow of social Darwinism, on the one hand, and popular coverage of sophomoric research topics, on the other. At the heart of this challenge, I would argue, is the logical fallacy of low redefinition, coupled with a tendency toward behavioral atomism.

In future posts, I shall explore these and other issues, as I endeavor to articulate a phenomenological account of a dynamic, situated, embodied model of the evolution of human being.