A defence of evolutionary psychology

The arguments put forward by Rose & Lucas (2001) are rather unclear. On the one hand, Professor Rose emphasises that “any understanding of the human mind and brain needs to locate its structure and workings in the context of evolution and development, as well as social, cultural and technological history”. Most sociobiologists or evolutionary psychologists would endorse this statement. However, the main reason behind Abed's (2000) editorial was that since the Second World War psychiatric research (with the notable exception of Bowlby) has deliberately ignored the possibility that human beings are the result of evolutionary processes, for understandable political reasons. All the other factors on Rose's list have been carefully studied, and the result is a mixture of incomplete and incompatible theories, with significant gaps in knowledge. For example, it has not been explained why certain mental disorders show a gender imbalance. An evolutionary perspective could provide fresh approaches and offer a much-needed integrative theoretical framework.

On the other hand, Rose later makes the accusation that “what is at stake is the autonomy of the social sciences as research fields from the imperialistic claims of an overly reductive biology at the hands of these new evolutionary fundamentalists”. This is a wholly exaggerated claim, but even if it were true, why does he regard the autonomy of the social sciences as so fragile? Social scientists are keen to use developments in mathematics, which is an inherently reductionist science. In any case, neither psychiatry nor psychology is a social science.

Rose's ultimate objection is that “what currently passes for evolutionary psychology is little more than an untestable bunch of anecdotes based upon a priori ideological convictions”. This could be said of most current psychiatric theories, exactly because the evolutionary context has been ignored. Surely, each new hypothesis should be scrutinised on its own merit. More than 140 years ago Darwin (1859; 1985 edn: 458) predicted that “in the distant future… psychology will be based on a new foundation”. For various ideological reasons “defenders of the truth” (Segersträle, 2000) have been trying to prevent this, but unless they can offer a more solid alternative, they will not succeed.