"Missing the revolution" misses the revolution!

Evolutionary psychology seems to be producing some very bad science these days. Of course, nobody can deny that the human mind evolved - and so the field has a reasonable basis - but evolutionary psychology persistently fails to have any understanding of culture. My recent takedown of Pinker's views on culture does not represent an isolated incident, but is typical of the field.

It is rather as though memetics had never happened, and Wilson's sociobiology continues to lead a zombie existence, despite being dead for the last 35 years.

A nice way to illustrate the rot, is to consider the 2005 book: "Missing the Revolution: Darwinism for Social Scientists". Sounds good, yes? But alas, it takes an evolutionary psychology perspective. Neither memetics nor cultural evolution get a mention.

"Missing the revolution" misses the revolution! If this is where social scientists go to get their Darwinism, they will get a hopelessly screwed-up and out of date version.

Evolutionary psychology needs to pull its socks up. At the moment, it is a scientific bad guy, spreading disinformation.

The rot has been patiently explained to these folk - by:

• Ehrlich, Paul and Feldman, Marcus (2003) Genes and Cultures: What Creates Our Behavioral Phenome? Current Anthropology, Vol 44(1), Feb 2003, 87-107.
  
  
• Ehrlich, Paul and Feldman, Marcus (2007) Genes, environments & behaviors. Daedalus, Vol. 136, No. 2, Pages 5-12.
  

...so at this stage, there really is no excuse.