ABSTRACT
The role of evolutionary psychology is both topical and controversial. Pinker (2002) and Dennett (2003) have released major studies for the non-specialist reader. Ridley and Baron-Cohen published in 2003; and at the time of writing Dawkins is about to publish. Pinker, Dennett and Dawkins, usually regarded, without justification, though Dawkins’ wordings are sometimes deliberately provocative, as on the ‘right’ of the political split, have been widely trailed in the media. The traditionally, also mistakenly, regarded ‘left’ has responded, with particular hostility to Pinker. The Sunday Times had Steven Rose criticising Baron-Cohen’s ‘essentialism’, but something of the real flavour of the debate can be sensed from this extract:
He [Baron-Cohen] is beloved of mutually puffing evolutionary psychologists [in this case Steven Pinker and Helena Cronin] who specialise in placing hyperbolic praise on the book jackets of their friends. Evolutionary psychology is the school of thought that claims that human nature was ‘fixed’ during a so-called environment of evolutionary adaptation in the Stone Age.
