Evolutionary psychology, once the darling of the public media, has been dumped in a recent Newsweek article by journalist Sharon Begley. Return accusations are beginning to fly from evolutionary psychologists, who accuse Begley of willful distortions and scientific incompetence (e.g., 1,2).

As usual for romantic quarrels,...

Pity people who become icons. Once they represent an important idea in the minds of others, they can't change their iconic status, even when they change their own minds.

Such was the fate of William D. Hamilton, the legendary founder of inclusive fitness theory, which was dubbed kin...

Meet Athena Aktipis--evolutionist, mother of two, and salsa dance instructor in her spare time. Perhaps it was the dancer in Athena that caused her to teach multilevel selection by having the students get up and move.

Each student is given a wooden stick with an A (for Altruistic)...

Richard Dawkins did not invent naïve gene selectionism (see T&R X) but he spread it far and wide with the publication of The Selfish Gene. Let's follow his logic, beginning on page 6 of the 1989 paperback edition:

This book will show how both individual selfishness and individual...

Naïve group selectionism (see T&R III) is the unquestioning belief that adaptations can evolve at all levels of the biological hierarchy--for the good of individuals, groups, species and even ecosystems--without requiring special conditions. Many people are prone to naïve group selectionism, today no less than in the past. That...

The haystack model (see T&R VIII) includes many assumptions but one was especially biased. Recall that each haystack is colonized by a single fertilized female bearing four genes coding for docility or aggressiveness--two of her own and two from her mate. Maynard Smith assumed that if even one of...

Group selection was decisively rejected on theoretical grounds, according to the patriotic history of individual selection theory. Richard Dawkins declared in 1982 that group selection had "soaked up more theoretical ingenuity than its biological interest warrants" and compared further inquiry to the futile search for a perpetual motion machine. Richard...

One memorable Christmas morning, as our kids were gathering around the tree, I was on my way upstairs to get a sweater when I smelled something really bad. I knew that smell. Our cat had diarrhea and had deposited a wet one somewhere. I walked all over the house trying...

Most people are prepared to admit that we are influenced by our cultures in ways that we don't understand. As a proverb puts it, the hardest thing for a fish to see is water. Part of the "water" of Victorian culture was an assumption of European superiority. Darwin was progressive...

One reason that I don't spend a lot of time bashing religion is because there are so many other flagrant departures from factual reality to pick on. Take the patriotic history of nations--the leaders who can do no wrong, the noble "us" and evil "them"--who needs supernatural agents when we...

By the 1960's, evolutionary theory had settled into a comfortable paradigm called the Modern Synthesis. With other major issues apparently settled (go here for an update on the Modern Synthesis), the issue of group selection began to occupy center stage. George C. Williams was not the only critic...

In their book Darwinism Evolving, David J. Depew and Bruce H. Weber make the interesting point that pre-Darwinian notions did not come to an abrupt halt with the advent of Darwin's theory. Instead, they often became repackaged in superficially Darwinian terms.

That certainly applies to notions of adaptation...

Consider some standard examples of design in nature: the aerodynamic wing of the bird, the concealing coloration of the moth, the dense fur of the polar bear. Darwin's insight was to explain these adaptations as a product of natural selection: individuals vary, some survive and reproduce better than others, and...

The phrase "truth and reconciliation" describes a constructive process for coming to terms with a troubled past. It has been used to resolve bitter political conflicts and achieve national unity, starting with South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 1995. I would like to initiate a similar process to resolve...

Two of my colleagues, Massimo Pigliucci and Larry Arnhart, have objected to my declaration that the invisible hand is dead. They also disagree with each other, giving the impression that scientists and evolutionists are no better at reaching a consensus than political spin doctors. Massimo's comments go...

I hope that our economy recovers, but the time has come to declare its guiding metaphor dead. This is the metaphor of the invisible hand, which makes it seem as if the narrow pursuit of self-interest miraculously results in a well-functioning society.

The invisible hand metaphor originates with Adam...

A funny thing happened to evolutionary theory on its way to transforming the study of life--the study of humanity got left out. Even though it was obvious to everyone in Darwin's day that, if true, his theory would revolutionize our conception of ourselves, by the early 20th century it was...

Randy Olson is a scientist-turned-filmmaker whose first production, A Flock of Dodos, was about the Intelligent Design circus. His second production, Sizzle: A Global Warming Comedy, is just being released. Both are fun and informative at the same time. They also address a theme that is worth...

Arguably the best New Yorker cover of all time was Saul Steinberg's "view of the world from 9th avenue" (March 29, 1976), which showed the richly detailed streets of Manhattan in the foreground, a highly simplified USA stretching into the distance, and "China," "Japan," and "Russia" as amorphous islands...

Wine connoisseurs on a budget often have a bottle of "the good stuff" that they reserve for special occasions. I feel like celebrating the conclusion of my Stealth series by breaking out the equivalent of a fine bottle of wine: a book that actually does use science to shed light...