Harvard Simians

(Note: Originally Posted 10-21-05)

Over the years, there have been those who have opined that a Harvard education was equivalent to a degree in monkey business. Their metaphorical complaint may be closer to the truth than one might assume. An article in the October/ November issue of Seed magazine titled "The Simian Seminar" provides a closer look at the monkey business that passes as higher education.

Seed Magazine Oct/Nov 2005

Before my readers get the wrong impression and assume the Simian Seminar is an experimental project designed to test whether or not chimpanzees are capable of earning an undergraduate degree from Harvard, I should clarify the name: according to the Seed article, "Devore and Trivers (Harvard professors) recruit(ed) an elite group of scholars called the Simian Seminar." The Simian Seminar is not about chimps in the learning lab, it refers to elite professors.

A short history lesson is in order. Shortly after Darwin published The Origin of the Species, Herbert Spencer kicked off what is known as Social Darwinism, a movement best captured by the phrase "survival of the fittest," which was followed by the eugenicist movement in the early twentieth century which "invoked natural selection to promote malicious policies of forced sterilization in America and policies of genocide in Europe." Out of favor after the Holocaust, Social Darwinist views waned, but did not disappear. They eventually re-emerged in the figure of Harvard professor E.O.Wilson, the father of sociobiology. Wilson "postulated biology would supplant all other fields of human inquiry—sociology, philosophy, religion, aesthetics—as the single way in which we will understand ourselves." Sociobiology met with strong protests that linked the subject with Social Darwinism and eugenics. The protests convinced Wilson to seek a lower profile. The disfavored sociobiology agenda morphed into a new movement: evolutionary psychology.

The Simian Seminar, an incubator of evolutionary psychology, avoided Wilson's public fate "by simply meeting in private to churn out big ideas." DeVore and Trivers "were convinced of the power of their simple insight: that to understand a particular human behavior, it is essential to ask how and why it might have evolved." DeVore kept his speculation in low-profile mode: "While the chief combatants in the sociobiology debate fought to a draw, DeVore was quietly nurturing a cadre of thinkers who would take the study of sociobiology forward, and who continue to apply evolution to human behavior." Many influenced by his movement are now leaders within the scientific establishment. DeVore accomplished that which Wilson prophesized: one no longer finds philosophy, religion, and aesthetics enjoying a robust presence on campus. By the time today's college students graduate, they are well indoctrinated in man-is-an-animal evolutionary psychology.

If evolutionary psychology were valid science, there would be little to protest. The facts, however, do not support evolutionary psychology. The science is sadly lacking, the metaphysical agenda blatantly in the forefront. What we find, when we look closely, are the pernicious effects of covert metaphysical propaganda.

Genes code for structure. Behavior is not structure. Behavior arises from complex variables that go well beyond genetically-determined structure. Reductionistic models of complex behavior easily become absurd, and fail to account for observation.

The use of an analogy will clarify the situation. Take an elite academician from the Simian Seminar to the race track. Observing the cars and using the same logic as evolutionary psychology, the Simian would propose to predict the behavior of the cars based upon their structure and the design changes instituted over the life of the automobile. Common sense tells us this analysis will fail to meaningfully predict the outcome of the race or a particular car’s behavior.

The Simian will enjoy some success predicting the Lamborghini will outrun the Geo on the backstretch due to superior horsepower and engineering. The Simian, however, will fail in the greater percentage of predictions, however, because he fails to take into account the driver behind the wheel.

The Ferrari, based upon structure, could be predicted to outrun the Taurus, unless the Ferrari is piloted by a shy ten-year-old and the Taurus is driven by a NASCAR veteran. When the Mercedes piles into the wall in corner two, our Simian would grossly misunderstand the reason for this behavior unless he understood it was driven by Ray Charles.

The structure of the automobile supports and constrains behavior. The Ferrari with a professional driver at the wheel might reach two-hundred miles per hour. A Toyota Prius, no matter how skilled the driver, would fail to reach that speed. The far greater set of behaviors observed, however, would be the result of the driver’s skill and the decisions he executes.

In the above situation, the Simian Seminar scholar would easily be seen as incompetent, even by a third-grade evaluator. And yet, the reductionist approach captured in the analogy above is the method evolutionary psychologists expect us to accept. Before society jettisons all other approaches to understanding behavior, as E.O. Wilson proposed, we should take a close look at the quality of science coming out of schools such as Harvard. The research scholar who fails to recognize there’s a driver in the car just might be promoting monkey business.