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A review by cari_mac
Why We Get Sick: The New Science of Darwinian Medicine by George C. Williams, Randolph M. Nesse
3.0
This book offers a great introduction to evolutionary medicine but often fails to account for the role of culture in evolution. Nessie and Williams explanations of pregnancy, mating, childbirth, and child-rearing are often reductive and do not account for power differentials present between men and women in human societies or the role of the medicalization of birth in removing knowledge and power from gestational parents.
Theoretically, I often find the explanation of the Environment of Evolutionary Adaptiveness to be quite reified and overly simplistic. Nessie and Williams do not explain, for example, that populations are continually evolving to meet the needs of our current ecological niches. I appreciate that they complicate the simple fact that we do not know what the EEA actually looked like and that there were likely many EEAs due to the variation in niches present, but ultimately find this theory lacking and in-explanatory.
Theoretically, I often find the explanation of the Environment of Evolutionary Adaptiveness to be quite reified and overly simplistic. Nessie and Williams do not explain, for example, that populations are continually evolving to meet the needs of our current ecological niches. I appreciate that they complicate the simple fact that we do not know what the EEA actually looked like and that there were likely many EEAs due to the variation in niches present, but ultimately find this theory lacking and in-explanatory.