One of my favorite discoveries in the blogoverse is the Evolutionary Psychology blog, by Rob Kurzban of the University of Pennsylvania. Evolutionary psychology had an explosive debut in the 1990s, becoming the subject of best-sellers and well-attended conferences. In recent years, a backlash has emerged, and while some criticisms have been justified, a lot of critics either attack straw men or make counterarguments that have serious flaws of their own. Evolutionary psychologists have been defending themselves, but in a relatively scattershot way. Kurzban started his blog in September, and seems to be blogging pretty consistently, and is offering some cogent and entertaining take-downs of the shabbier examples of evo-psycho backlash. I hope the backlashers jump into the comment threads!
PS–Someone has to fix the formatting on Kurzban’s blog. The excerpts look like one-sentence posts….
PPS–Talk about throwing stones from a glass house. Sorry about the headline typo. Now fixed.
Originally published October 26, 2010. Copyright 2010 Carl Zimmer.