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Article: Will Evolutionary Psychology Grow Up?
- Article from:
- Free Inquiry
- Article date:
- December 22, 2000
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2000 Council for Democratic and Secular Humanism, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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HOW TO BECOME A MATURE SCIENCE
A primary cognitive goal of science is to explain, thereby giving understanding, prediction is mainly used for purposes of testing. In evolutionary psychology explanations of human natural and of individual differences abound, and so it has become a hot topic. People wonder whether they should believe it and do not know how to go about evaluating it.
My thesis has negative and positive aspects. Negatively, I shall argue here that evolutionary psychology is not a mature science on several related grounds: it makes premature claims to explanatory success, its explanatory results are variations on evolutionary truisms or ...