File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1997/97-02-02.144, message 47


From: "Rosser Jr, John Barkley" <rosserjb-AT-jmu.edu>
Subject: M-I: Re:  M-SCI: Reinstating the Beast in Man (Was: Are Apes Naughty by Nature?)
Date: Sat, 1 Feb 1997 14:24:44 -0500 ()


     Well, I have to agree with those who say that 
evolutionary psychology is mostly just sociobiology redux 
with all its faults.  As for this all this carrying on 
about mating and courtship, hey, didn't Freud say that 
everything was sex, and where is he today?  Out, out, out!
     Speaking of which I am reminded of a bad joke:
     There are five wise men discussing the fundamental 
source of human behavior.  Moses points to the head; Jesus 
points to the heart; Marx points to the stomach; Freud 
points to the crotch, and Einstein says, "hey, it's all 
relative!"
Barkley Rosser
On Sat, 1 Feb 1997 05:40:57 -0500 (EST) malgosia askanas 
<ma-AT-panix.com> wrote:


> > I think many on the left (feminists included) fear the difference between
> > stating the obvious -- that young men over-produce poetry,  plays and music,
> > and that girls tend to be less creative or assertive than boys -- and
> > somehow lending the imprimatur of science (and evolutionary psychologists
> > feel that their work is on a genuinely scientific footing) to the notion
> > that these differences are immutable.    And the determinism suggested in
> > many of the arguments employed in EP can of course lead to racial genetics,
> > state eugenics and the death camps.
> 
> Well, this is perhaps going to be appalingly unscientific, but it seems
> to me that just because one makes a connection between human creativity 
> and mating doesn't permit any conclusions about things like age or gender.  
> Courtship in humans is certainly not restricted to males or to the young.
> Montaigne claims that fortunate is he who can be devote himself to love 
> in his youth and to ambition in his old age, but I think most are not
> so fortunate and the division between love and ambition is vague and hence 
> this thread.  In any case, women engage in just as much mating display
> as men, only the manifestations are of course different, and if we ask
> "why the difference" then we get back into the full richness of all the 
> discussions about gender and whether and how it is constructed. 
> 
> And to get back to science, I think one of the most horrifying things
> about science in our society is that it is perceived as something that
> has the power to lend an imprimatur to various social policies.  Why do
> we have to conclude _anything_ about social policies from scientific
> findings?  It's not the findings (legitimate or not) that are at fault,
> of course, but our attitudes towards each other; attitudes which have
> very little to do with love of, and respect for, life (ah! how I wax!).  
> 
> 
> -m 
> 
> 
>      --- from list marxism-and-sciences-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---

-- 
Rosser Jr, John Barkley
rosserjb-AT-jmu.edu




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