Scan barcode
A review by superpetemo
The Evolution of Beauty: How Darwin's Forgotten Theory of Mate Choice Shapes the Animal World - And Us by Richard O. Prum
2.0
I pretty much buy the central hypothesis concerning aesthetic evolution/sexual selection and the chapters on birds are quite good, however there are some fundamental problems with the rest of the book that are hard to overlook. Skimming some of the other reviews for this book, I’d like to say upfront that the problem IS NOT that the author applies a progressive political lens to evolutionary biology and explicitly identifies this as a feminist theory. Scientific theories are always conditioned by and contributing to the production of common sense and ideological legitimation/critique, so I don’t really see making that explicit to be a problem. It makes sense to try to apply scientific findings to your political commitments!
My main point of pushback is the under treatment of intersections between culture, desire, and human cognition generally. Somewhat ironically, this intersection is quite well covered by a variety of literature in feminist and queer theory and the book would greatly benefit from greater engagement with what that body of work actually has to say.
Getting into specific critiques, the author doesn’t really seem to understand how a null hypothesis works (ie. It can’t be an alternative explanatory theory) and commits the original sin of evopsych by assuming all human behaviour and cognition can be explained via biological imperatives that are the result of evolutionary processes. This leads to some pretty unsatisfying speculation about the evolutionary origins of queer people, opposite-sex friendships, and art appreciation. These seem like topics that really can’t, and to be normative probably shouldn’t, be reduced to purely biological phenomena.
It’s too bad the author isn’t more rigorous and/or restrained in his argumentation, as he has essentially good politics and obviously cares deeply about the topic.
My main point of pushback is the under treatment of intersections between culture, desire, and human cognition generally. Somewhat ironically, this intersection is quite well covered by a variety of literature in feminist and queer theory and the book would greatly benefit from greater engagement with what that body of work actually has to say.
Getting into specific critiques, the author doesn’t really seem to understand how a null hypothesis works (ie. It can’t be an alternative explanatory theory) and commits the original sin of evopsych by assuming all human behaviour and cognition can be explained via biological imperatives that are the result of evolutionary processes. This leads to some pretty unsatisfying speculation about the evolutionary origins of queer people, opposite-sex friendships, and art appreciation. These seem like topics that really can’t, and to be normative probably shouldn’t, be reduced to purely biological phenomena.
It’s too bad the author isn’t more rigorous and/or restrained in his argumentation, as he has essentially good politics and obviously cares deeply about the topic.