Making Sense of Biology

Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution, Theodosius Dobzhansky (1973). The American Biology Teacher, 35(3), 125-129.

How Does Creationism Harm African Americans?

American society has been remarkably consistent concerning its general resistance to evolutionary thinking across the 20^th century.  The data below illustrate this fact.

NBC News Poll conducted by the polling organizations of Peter Hart (D) and Bill McInturff (R). March 8-10, 2005. N=800 adults nationwide. MoE ± 3.5.
						.
“Which do you think is more likely to actually be the explanation for the origin of human life on Earth: evolution or the biblical account of creation?” Asked of those who answered “Biblical account”: “And by this do you mean that God created the world in six days and rested on the seventh as described in the Book of Genesis, or that God was a divine presence in the formation of the universe?”
						.
		%
	Evolution	33
	Biblical account	57
	Created in six days	44
	Divine presence	13
	None of the above (vol.)	3
	Unsure	7

 

The data indicate that the majority of Americans accept a Biblical account of the origin of the human species.  Even more striking is the fact, that of those who accept Biblical accounts, 77% of these individuals accept a literalist interpretation of the event occurring over six 24 hour days.  As an African American scientist, I had always suspected that the response to this question amongst those of my own ethnicity would be even higher.  To address this suspicion I recently contacted the Peter Hart and Bill McInturff polling organization and asked for the response percentages for African Americans.  Their data showed the following:

16% Evolution

80% Biblical Account

61% God created world in six days

19% God was divine presence

2%  None of the above

3%  Unsure

These data validate what I have always known, African Americans are ½ as likely as the general population to accept evolution as a valid explanation and 1.4 times more likely to accept the Biblical account. Finally within Biblical account, the literalist explanation (6 days) was 76% about the same as the general population (but remember a larger percentage of African Americans reject evolution.)  Why does this happen?  The majority of African Americans belong to Protestant denominations that are fundamentalist.  The National Baptist Convention for example claims that every bit of the Bible is factually true.  Ironically, unlike the Southern Baptist Convention (which is predominantly European American and was founded on segregationist principles), the NBC hasn’t invested a great deal of energy in the Evolution/Creation debate.  This may be in part, because the NBC has always been more concerned with issues of social justice.  Despite its relatively progressive stance compared to the SBC, I argue here that the fundamentalism of the NBC is causing harm to the African American community.  Specifically its fundamentalist views make it more difficult to attract talented African American students into careers in science (specifically those disciplines in science that may contradict fundamentalist doctrine, e.g. Archaeology, Anthropology, Human Genetics, or Evolutionary Biology.) 

Ironically one of the places in which it is easiest to expose the fallacies of special creationism/fundamentalist doctrine is in regard to the concept of human genetic diversity.  The logic of the fundamentalist concept of race fails miserably to explain the genetic diversity that we observe amongst modern humans.  If we were to read Genesis literally, as fundamentalists do, it predicts that modern humans are ~10,000 years old and that the original humans had physical characteristics similar to modern day Middle Easterners.  In this vein, Biblical fundamentalism is no different from any of the other religious narratives of creation.  For example, American Indian creation narratives claim that their great spirit created their people on their ancestral tribal land.  Modern American Indian traditionalists vehemently reject the notion that they are derived from or share ancestry with any other human populations (especially Africans.)  For example, some American Indians of the Northwest claimed that they should have sovereignty over the remains of the Kennewick man fossil under the assumption that because the bones were found in territory that their tribe once inhabited, that the remains had to be one of their tribal ancestors¹. For the American Indians tribes, the anatomical or genetic evidence concerning Kennewick man was irrelevant.  They argued that neither of these could be used to determine the cultural identity of the individual in question.  They claimed this despite the fact that the Kennewick fossil had anatomical features there were significantly different from modern Amerindians².  Eight prominent anthropologists disputed the claim of the American Indians by arguing that there was no evidence supporting the claim that these remains had cultural continuity with those of modern American Indians.  This is a clear example where the methodologies of religious and scientific thinking were in conflict.  For the American Indians involved, their rejection of the Bering Strait theory is primarily due to its conflict with their traditional religious beliefs and oral histories.  In addition, they are suspicious of how the scientific claims may be used to weaken their land rights under treaty with the United States government (and certainly given the US government history of breaking treaties this is a legitimate concern³.  Indeed some of the claims of the Havusupai Tribe against Arizona State University stem from the former’s resistance to their DNA being used to support research that claims a non-North American origin for their people⁴.

In this instance, the Amerindian religious objections are no different from those of Biblical fundamentalists. Both groups reject the scientific evidence primarily on the grounds that it contradicts their religious story of human origins.  This is a common feature of religious creation narratives, all are constructed to explain the origin of the people who believe in the religion or deity.    Thus, Kenyan creation narratives speak of how the Gods created them in their home land, as do Japanese narratives speak of how the Gods created humans in Japan.  However, the scientific evidence only supports those creation narratives that claim that humans first originated in East Africa.

It may seem that due to the religious/supernatural character of these narratives that they cannot be subjected to scientific test.  However, most fundamentalists do not dispute that DNA is the genetic code of life.  What they dispute is that DNA as the genetic code can evolve to found new species.  Many creationists will accept microevolutionary changes within species as legitimate.  The concession that microevolutionary changes occur within species results from the fact that these changes have been observed in historical time.  There are also many genetic mechanisms that have been observed and by themselves are not required to have resulted from an evolutionary mechanism.  For example, crossing over is consistently observed during meiosis (gametogenesis.)  This results because portions of the DNA that have high sequence similarity line up with each other during meiosis and often exchange pieces.  Evolutionary biologists argue that crossing over is an important source of new variation for natural selection to operate on, however the fact that crossing over exists is not a requirement for evolution and crossing over could exist without resulting from an evolutionary process.

How does crossing over invalidate creationist claims of origin?  One of the results of crossing over is that genetic linkage groups (genes that are inherited together due to close proximity on a chromosome) are disrupted over time.  This has been observed in laboratory populations and in domesticated mammals⁵.  It has also been observed that newer populations have larger linkage groups, and that due to crossing over, the average size of these groups gets smaller through time.  Thus we can “age” populations by the average size of their linkage groups.  This provides us with a way to estimate the age of human populations that is not necessarily linked to a macroevolutionary process.  Studies that examine the size of linkage groups have been accomplished in modern humans.  They all concur that sub-Saharan Africans have the smallest linkage groups on average, followed by Middle Eastern populations, Europeans = East Asians = Pacific Islanders, followed by American Indians.  This result vitiates the fundamentalist Biblical claim that Middle Eastern populations were created first or that modern Africans are descended from Middle Easterners.  The evidence shows that it was the other way around (if one is a monogenist.)  Monogenists believe that there was one single creation event, and that all humans are descended from an original pair.  Polygenists, on the other hand, claim that there were multiple Adams and Eves.  Some of them adhere to the idea of pre-Adamite races; they used this notion to assert that superiority of the progeny of Abraham (which includes the Europeans) and to claim that Africans were a separate and inferior species⁶.  Also notice that this result doesn’t invalidate the Amerindian creation narratives.  The Amerindians don’t assume that there was only one God.  Thus, the African and European Gods could have created populations of humans at different times.  Table 1 states a number of Christian fundamentalist claims concerning human origins.  It also states claims that follow logically from polygenist as well as evolutionary theory.  Table 2 reports what modern genetics and fossil evidence reveals concerning human diversity.  Table 2 suggests that all of the monogenist claims concerning human diversity are falsified, in the case of polygeny 2/5 predictions are supported, and finally for evolutionary theory 4/4 are supported with 1 claim not relevant since evolutionary theory makes no specific prediction for the phenomenon.  From these results we would have to logically conclude that there is no physical evidence that supports monogenist creationist claims concerning the origin of humans.  Thus if one wishes to adhere to special creationism while insisting that there be physical evidence for it, you would have to become a polygenist.  Of course, the body of physical evidence also suggests that polygenism is false and supports that modern human evolved with their place origin located in Sub-Saharan Africa.

 

Table 1: Predictions of Biblical Literalist Creationist and Evolutionary Scenarios on Human Diversity Claims	Monogeny	Polygeny	Evolutionary
Origin of humans: Location	Middle East (ME).	Pre-Adamite races could have originated anywhere, but Adamite races in the Middle East.	East Africa
Origin of humans: Timeline	Within the last 10,000 years.	Pre-Adamite races could have originated at anytime, but Adamite races within the last 10,000 years.	Within the last 200,000 – 150,000 ybp.
Genetic Diversity	More should exist in the ME.	Pre-Adamite races should have more genetic diversity than the Adamite races.	Greatest genetic diversity should be in Africa, less as you move away from Africa, small populations should have the least.
Skin and eye color.	Lighter skin should have appeared first, darker skin after Noah.  All eye colors should have appeared at the same time.	Darker skins appear first, lighter skins of Adamites should appear later.	Darker skin appears first since humans evolved in the tropics.  Lighter skins evolve after humans migrate to northern climates (~ 70,000 – 55,000 ybp.) Brown before blue eyes.
Deleterious genes	Descendents of Ham should have more deleterious genes (Henry Morris).	Pre-Adamites should have more defective genes.	No explicit prediction.
Table 2: Results of Genetic Studies on Human Diversity Claim	Monogeny	Polygeny	Evolutionary
Origin of humans: Location	No, East Africa.	No, all humans ancestry traces to Africa.	Yes, East Africa.
Origin of humans: timeline.	No, genomic and individual genes results suggest 200,00 to 150,000 ybp.	No all humans have genes that fit the 200,000 to 150,000 ybp results.	Yes, Africa 200,00 – 150,000 ybp., ME, Europe, Asia – 100,000 – 35,000 ybp, Americas ~ 35,000 ybp.
Genetic diversity	No, more in Sub-Saharan Africa.	Yes, Sub-Saharan Africans > ME.	Yes, greatest genetic diversity in Africa, less in Europe and Asia.
Skin and eye color	No, darker color genes more ancient.	Yes, darker color skins more ancient.	Yes, darker skin more ancient, light pigmentation recent, e.g. blue eye allele is only ~ 6,000 ybp.
Deleterious genes	No, Europeans have more deleterious than Africans**.	No, Europeans have more deleterious genes.	No explicit prediction, although this is predicted by genetic drift an evolutionary mechanism.

*Fossils of anatomically modern humans are first found in sub-Saharan Africa in this time frame, they are not found outside of this region until around 100,000 ybp.

** Lohmueller, K.E., Indap, A.R., Schmidt, S., Boyko, A.R., Hernandez, R.D., Hubisz, M.J., Sninsky, J.J., White, T.J., Sunyaev, S.R., Nielsen, R., Clark, A.G., Bustamante, C., Proportionately more deleterious genetic variation in European than in African populations, Nature Genetics Vol. 451: 994-998, 2008; Barreiro, L.B., Laval, G., Quach, H., Patin, E., and Quintara-Murci, L., Natural selection has driven population differentiation in modern humans, Nature Genetics, 40(3):340 – 345, 2008.

How Does Creationist Thinking Cause Harm?

While the evidence for the African origin of modern humans is overwhelming, with regard to convincing people of the utility of evolutionary biology, it is more important to emphasis evolutionary thinking in action.  Thus, the most important test of any worldview is does it explain reality.  And if it does, what prescriptions does it suggest for human activity?  For example, prior to the germ theory of disease, it was a common belief amongst European Christians that many illnesses were caused by demonic possession.  If the former theory is true than disease can be cured by medicine and if the latter were true than you need to consult a priest for an exorcism.  In the present day, few religious people subscribe to the demonic possession theory of disease.  Yet and still, religious explanations of important social issues still exist and in the United States these have significant traction with regard to influencing public policy.  For example, the majority of Christian fundamentalists see homosexuality as a deviant behavior that is a sin against God.  They claim that they love the sinners, but despise their sin.  Due to the influence of this group on American politics, legal protections against anti-gay discrimination are very weak.  The problem with this thinking is that increasing evidence demonstrates the homosexuality is biologically based (resulting from genetic, environmental, developmental, and chance factors⁷. This evidence has caused at least some Christians to re-evaluate their views on homosexuality.  If this behavior is biological/genetic and therefore is not the result of a choice to disobey God’s law, then it cannot be considered sinful.  It should be remembered here that the creationist believes that everything that occurs within humans is the result of God’s design.  This example graphically illustrates how two different world views describe reality and in turn what those views would prescribe for human social action. 

There are several examples of how fundamentalist/creationist belief harms African Americans who adhere to its tenets.  Certainly, in the above case, the religious fundamentalism of African Americans had led them to disproportionately shun homosexual members of the African American community⁸. The harm that has resulted has included higher rates of suicide amongst these homosexuals as well as them engaging in more risky sexual behavior thus infecting non-homosexuals as well.  In addition, efforts to stem the tide of HIV infection as well as teen pregnancy rates suffer from fundamentalist ideology.  For example, two of the most pressing problems in the African American community today are the HIV epidemic, the increasing percentage of teen pregnancies and the disproportionate rate of underweight babies.  The age of mother is an important variable influencing low birth weight (as is poverty.)  Evangelical and literalists in African American community argued for and have succeeded in implementing abstinence only programs to deal with teen pregnancy.  For example, 78% of African Americans belong to fundamentalist congregations, and this percentage may have been even higher in the past.  The abstinence theme is undoubtedly heard by millions of African American teens, far more than heard by European American teens whose churches aren’t as literalist.  Yet the data clearly show that HIV and teen pregnancy rates are much higher in African Americans. The African American rate is twice the European American rate.  The National Center for Health Statistic reported that the birth rate rose by 3 percent between 2005 and 2006 among 15- to 19-year-old females, after plummeting 34 percent between 1991 and 2005.  There is also a nine times higher percentage of Chlamydia and HIV infection in African Americans despite the fact that this group is far more likely to hear abstinence preached in their churches.  These increases occurred despite the fact that in this period, abstinence-only sex-education programs, received about $176 million a year in federal funding.  Despite their gross failure to stem the tide of teen age pregnancy or sexually transmitted diseases, the proponents of abstinence education continue to defend the programs, and instead blamed the increases on the rise on the ineffectiveness of conventional sexual education programs that focus on condom use and other contraceptives, as well as the pervasive depiction of sexuality in the culture⁹.

Evolutionary biologists would approach this problem entirely differently.  Under the evolutionary paradigm the core behavioral activity of all species is reproduction and humans are not excluded from this.  For this reason, abstinence programs are fool’s errands.  Human adolescents face a rush of hormones that are preparing them to engage in reproductive behavior.  Abstinence only programs assume that by “will” alone these young people will be able to control the urges to engage in sexual activity.  Evolutionary theory would suggest that a significant number of adolescents will engage in sexual activity and for that reason it is best to provide them sex education, safe-sex training, contraceptives, and relationship counseling. 

Creationist ideology causes harm by limiting desire to pursue scientific careers

Reason suggests that students who are hostile to the methodologies of science should shun science careers.  Several studies have demonstrated a negative relationship between student religiosity and likelihood to choose science as a career.  These studies are suggestive however.  None of them have really examined enough students to establish a differential impact of African American religiosity, particularly fundamentalism on the choice of specific science careers.  For example, North Carolina A&T State University (NCATSU) produces substantial numbers of African American engineers, but virtually none who pursue degrees in biology with an emphasis in evolution.  Clearly there is a need for additional studies with substantial sample sizes and conducted in a variety of academic settings to evaluate the influence of creationist ideology with regard to science careers.  One way that we will be hoping to make a difference in this trend is through our NSF funded Science and Technology Center: Biocomputational Evolution in Action (BEACON.)  BEACON is a consortium that includes Michigan State University, as well as the universities of Idaho, Texas, and Washington, along with NCATSU.  This will unite faculty and students interested in both biological and computational evolution and encourage students to pursue careers in these disciplines.

References

1. Tall Bear, Kimberly, DNA, blood, and racializing the tribe, Wicazo Sa Review, Spring 2003, pp. 81- 107.

2. Svedlund, A. and Anderson, D., Gordon Creek Woman meets Kennewick Man: New interpretations and protocols regarding the peopling of the Americas, American Antiquity 64(4), 569-576, 1999. Chatters, J., The recovery and first analysis of an early Holocene human skeleton from Kennewick, Washington, American Antiquity 65(2), pp. 291-316, 2000.

3. Tall Bear, 2003.

4. Michelle M. Mello, J.D., Ph.D., and Leslie E. Wolf, J.D., M.P.H., The Havasupai Indian Tribe Case — Lessons for Research Involving Stored Biologic Samples, New England Journal of Medicine, June 2010, 10.1056/nejmp1005203.

5. Clegg, M.T., Kidwell, J.F., and Horch, C.R., Dynamics of correlated genetic systems V. Rates of decay of linkage disequilibria in experimental populations of Drosophila melanogaster, Genetics 94: 217-234; Betancourt, A.J., and Presgraves, D.C., Linkage limits the power of natural selection in Drosophila melanogaster, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA 99: 13616 – 13620, 2002; Amaral, A.J., Megens, H.J., Crooijmans, R.P., Heuven, H.C., and Groenen, M.A., Linkage disequilbrium decay and haplotype block structure in the pig, Genetics 179 (1): 569-79, 2008.

6.  Graves, J.L.  The Emperor’s New Clothes: Biological Theories of Race at the Millennium, soft cover edition, 2^nd printing with a new preface by the author, Rutgers University Press, 2005a.

7.  Hamer, D. and Copeland, P., Science of Desire: The Gay Gene and the Biology of Behavior, (New York, NY: Touchstone), 1995. Roughgarden, J., Evolution’s Rainbow: Diversity, Gender, and Sexuality in Nature and People, (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press), 2004; Ciani, A.C., Cermelli, P., Zanzotto, P., Sexually Antagonistic Selection in Human Male Homosexuality, PLoS ONE 3(6): e2282.  

8.  Stokes, J.P. and Peterson, J.L., Homophobia, self-esteem, and risk for HIV among African American men who have sex with men, AIDS Education and Prevention, 10 (3): . 278-292, 1998; Battle, J. and Bennett, M., Research on Lesbian and Gay Populations in the African American Community: What Have We Learned?, Perspectives pp. 35 – 46., 2000; Fullilove, M.T. and Fullilove, R.E., Stigma as an obstacle to AIDS action: The Case of the African American Community, American Behavioral Scientist, 42(7): 1117-1129, 1999.

9.  Brazelton, E.W., Frandsen, J.C., Mckown, D.B., Brown, C.D.; Interaction of Religion and Science: Development of a Questionnaire and the Results of Its Administration to Undergraduates, College Student Journal, Vol. 33, 1999. Mazur, A., Believers and disbelievers in evolution, Politics and the Life Sciences 23(2): 55 -61, 2005. Harrold, F.B. and Eve, R.A., Cult Archaeology and Creationism: Understanding Pseudoscientific Beliefs About the Past, (Iowa City, IA: University of Iowa Press), 1995. Graves, J.L. and J. Leigh (1994) Materialist philosophy, Evolutionary Biology, and African-American Students II: Empirical Evidence, in: Race in a Global Society; University of Oklahoma Symposium in African-American Studies, November 1993.

I am a new author in this series of blogs, please check back soon for my first post!

Making Sense of Biology

Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution, Theodosius Dobzhansky (1973). The American Biology Teacher, 35(3), 125-129.

“Sometimes Even the President of the United States Must Stand Naked…”

…Or Be Racially Profiled.  One would think that this should not happen to the President of the United States. However, the Associated Press recently reported that President Barack Obama’s early colon cancer screening was sometimes recommended for high-risk groups such as African Americans¹. From this we can infer that the president’s doctors are counting Mr. Obama as an African American in the biomedical (and not cultural) sense of the word.  Is this reasonable?

President Barack Obama is descended from a Kenyan father and a European American mother. Therefore he is does not share the same ancestry as most socially described African Americans who are descended from West and Central Africans with about 18.5% European ancestry². When African Americans were examined using 1327 genetic markers compared to other world populations they were closer to Europeans than they were to Western Africans.  The STRUCTURE analysis with 14 clusters showed Saharan Africa, Western Africa, Central Africa, Eastern Africa, Southern Africa, African Americans, Europe, Middle East, Central Asia, India, Eastern Asia, Oceania, and the Americas³.  On the face of it, the position of African Americans along the genetic continuum of human diversity seems odd.  After all, historical records indicate that the vast majority of African Americans are descended from Western and Central Africa.  Few slave cargoes arrived in the Transatlantic route from Eastern Africa (certainly not Kenya.) The records of the slave trade are available in a searchable database entitled: The Transatlantic Slave Trade Database⁴. There are records of over 34,937 voyages between the years 1514 to 1866.  In this database, the vast majority of slaves originated from West and Central Africa.  There is a significant subset of slaves that originated in Southeastern Africa (today’s Tanzania and Malawi⁵.)  It is possible that some of these slaves may have originated in Kenya; however these voyages ended in Brazil (where the vast majority of African slaves ended up.)  Thus, it is highly unlikely that any slaves of Kenyan origin ended up in either the Caribbean or Southern American states.  Thus it is likely that the admixture of European genes into African Americans explains how STRUCTURE places African Americans in a position closer to Europeans and past Eastern Africans on the genetic continuum of the human species.  This also demonstrates that there really is not a great deal of genetic variation within the human species to begin with, since such a small amount of average admixture (18.5%) moves a population whose African ancestry is mainly western and central, past Eastern Africans towards Europeans.

This means that any African American is as likely to share genes in common with Barack Obama through his mother’s ancestry as they are to through the father’s Kenyan ancestry.  What little information we have about colorectal cancer rates we have from Africa suggest that this disease is rare amongst Africans⁶.  It could be rare because predisposing genetic elements do not give rise to cancer in African environments; or it could be rare there because Africans do not share the same colon cancer predisposing alleles with African Americans. Actually, the etiology of colon cancer strongly suggests that environmental factors are much more responsible for the patterns of incidence we observe than genetic ones.  For example, exposure to heterocyclic amines and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons are known risk factors for colorectal cancer.  The amount of exposure of these compounds an individual gets is related to the amount of red meat uptake in their diet.  The relationship of exposure of these compounds to red meat uptake could explain why colorectal cancers are rare in African populations, who do not eat nearly as much red meat as Europeans or Americans.  One study examined genetic polymorphisms at UGT1A1 and UGT1A9 to determine the degree to which these explain variations in colorectal cancer rates between African- and European-Americans.  UGT1A1 and UGT1A9 detoxify heterocyclic amines and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons.  The study found that when all individuals were examined that there was no significant difference between genetic variants and colorectal cancer incidence; however when stratified by self-identified race, intermediate and low activity genotypes were associated with an increased risk in European Americans, but not African Americans⁷.  The racial profiling conclusion that one would draw from this, is that with regard to this locus, it would be President Obama’s European ancestry that would put him at risk, not his African ancestry.  This is a conclusion rarely arrived at by racially profiling physicians!⁸

Another important environmental risk factor for colorectal cancer is the bacterium Helicobacter pylori.  The role that this bacterium plays in producing disease is complex.  It is an interaction between the bacterium, host, and environment⁹. There are specific genetic variants of H. pylori that are more likely to be associated with intestinal cancers and the frequency of these genetic variants is different around the world¹⁰. Finally, one might try to find a racially profiling mechanism in the relationship between vitamin D receptor variation and intestinal cancer risk.  After all, we know that human populations show clinal variation in vitamin D receptor alleles, associated with solar intensity¹¹.  We also know that lifetime sunlight exposure and dietary history influence tumor incidence and that vitamin D plays an important role in mediating incidence and survival of cancer¹². Again, when applied to Barack Obama this reasoning would not hold up.  VDR frequencies are associated with latitude, not socially constructed racial groups.  In his case, he has ancestry from Northern Europe and tropical Africa.  Strictly speaking we would expect him to show heterozygote advantage with regard to VDR genotype.  With respect to environment, especially dietary composition, President Obama’s education would indicate that he has maintained the sort of diet one would expect from an upper middle class European American.  Thus, none of the features of the African American stereotype that are required for a racially profiled diagnosis to have any relevance to him would be in place.

Indeed, racially profiling really doesn’t work for anyone¹³. Yet despite the excellent scientific reasons to abandon this form of medical practice, it is still rampant.  The fact that even the President of the United States experiences this, illustrates the nature of the problem we face to eliminate it.

But since my thought dreams have been seen, they’d scheduled my head for the guillotine…

It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)

Darkness at the break of noon
Shadows even the silver spoon
The handmade blade, the child’s balloon
Eclipses both the sun and moon
To understand you know too soon
There is no sense in trying.

Pointed threats, they bluff with scorn
Suicide remarks are torn
From the fool’s gold mouthpiece the hollow horn
Plays wasted words, proves to warn
That he not busy being born is busy dying.

Temptation’s page flies out the door
You follow, find yourself at war
Watch waterfalls of pity roar
You feel to moan but unlike before
You discover that you’d just be one more
Person crying.

So don’t fear if you hear
A foreign sound to your ear
It’s alright, Ma, I’m only sighing.

As some warn victory, some downfall
Private reasons great or small
Can be seen in the eyes of those that call
To make all that should be killed to crawl
While others say don’t hate nothing at all
Except hatred.

Disillusioned words like bullets bark
As human gods aim for their mark
Make everything from toy guns that spark
To flesh-colored Christs that glow in the dark
It’s easy to see without looking too far
That not much is really sacred.

While preachers preach of evil fates
Teachers teach that knowledge waits
Can lead to hundred-dollar plates
Goodness hides behind its gates
But even the president of the United States
Sometimes must have to stand naked.

An’ though the rules of the road have been lodged
It’s only people’s games that you got to dodge
And it’s alright, Ma, I can make it.

Advertising signs they con
You into thinking you’re the one
That can do what’s never been done
That can win what’s never been won
Meantime life outside goes on
All around you.

You lose yourself, you reappear
You suddenly find you got nothing to fear
Alone you stand with nobody near
When a trembling distant voice, unclear
Startles your sleeping ears to hear
That somebody thinks they really found you.

A question in your nerves is lit
Yet you know there is no answer fit
To satisfy, insure you not to quit
To keep it in your mind and not forget
That it is not he or she or them or it
That you belong to.

Although the masters make the rules
For the wise men and the fools
I got nothing, Ma, to live up to.

For them that must obey authority
That they do not respect in any degree
Who despise their jobs, their destinies
Speak jealously of them that are free
Cultivate their flowers to be
Nothing more than something they invest in.

While some on principles baptized
To strict party platform ties
Social clubs in drag disguise
Outsiders they can freely criticize
Tell nothing except who to idolize
And then say God bless him.

While one who sings with his tongue on fire
Gargles in the rat race choir
Bent out of shape from society’s pliers
Cares not to come up any higher
But rather get you down in the hole
That he’s in.

But I mean no harm nor put fault
On anyone that lives in a vault
But it’s alright, Ma, if I can’t please him.

Old lady judges watch people in pairs
Limited in sex, they dare
To push fake morals, insult and stare
While money doesn’t talk, it swears
Obscenity, who really cares
Propaganda, all is phony.

While them that defend what they cannot see
With a killer’s pride, security
It blows the minds most bitterly
For them that think death’s honesty
Won’t fall upon them naturally
Life sometimes must get lonely.

My eyes collide head-on with stuffed
Graveyards, false gods, I scuff
At pettiness which plays so rough
Walk upside-down inside handcuffs
Kick my legs to crash it off
Say okay, I have had enough
What else can you show me?

And if my thought-dreams could be seen
They’d probably put my head in a guillotine
But it’s alright, Ma, it’s life, and life only.

Copyright © 1965 by Warner Bros. Inc.; renewed 1993 by Special Rider Music

Notes

1. Associated Press, Doctors overtesting, reports say, Greensboro News & Record, March 13, 2010.
2. K. Bryc,  A. Auton,M.R. Nelson, et al. (2010)  Genome-wide patterns of population structure and admixture in West Africans and African Americans, Proc. Nat. Academy of Sciences, 107(2): 786-791. www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.0909559107.
3. S.A. Tishkoff, F.A. Reed, F.R. Friedlaender, et al., The genetic structure and history of Africans and African Americans, Science May 22,  324: 1035-1044 (2009).
4. http://wilson.library.emory.edu:9090/tast/database/search.faces.  T
5. Hine, D, Hine W.C, and Harrold, S, African Americans: A Concise History, (New York, NY: Pearson), 2010; see map pg. 29.
6. Saidi H, Nyaim EO, Githaiga JW, Karuri D, CRC surgery trends in Kenya, 1993-2005, World J Surg. 32(2):217-23, 2008.
7. Girard, H et al, UGT1A1 and UGT1A9 functional variants, meat intake, and colon cancer, among Caucasians and African Americans, Mutation Research 644 (1-2): 56-63; 2008.
8. Dorer, M.S, Talarico, S, and Salama, N.R, Helicobacter pylori’s unconventional role in health and disease, PLoS Pathogens 5(10): 1-6, 2009.
9. Graves, J.L., Biological V. Social Definitions of Race: Implications for Modern Biomedical Research, Review of Black Political Economy, DOI: 10.1007/s12114-009-9053-3, 2009.

10.  Wu, I et al, Association between Helicobacter pylori seropositivity and digestive tract cancers, World J. Gastroenterol 15(43): 5465-5471, 2009.

11.  Roychoudhury, A and Nei, M, Human Polymorphic Genes: World Distribution, (New York, NY: Oxford University Press), 1988.’

12.  Campbell, F.C. et al, The Yin and Yang of vitamin D receptor (VDR) signaling in neoplastic progression: Operational networks and tissue-specific growth control, Biochemical Pharmocology 79:1-9, 2010.

13. Graves, J.L. and Rose, M.R. (2006) Against Racial Medicine, Patterns of Prejudice vol. 40 (4-5): 481-493, Sander Gilman editor.

Making Sense of Biology

Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution, Theodosius Dobzhansky (1973). The American Biology Teacher, 35(3), 125-129.

 “Love is a smoke…”

No topic can be more apropos in February than romantic love.  The reader may take offense immediately.  Obviously anyone who claims that they can “make sense” of love, must be either delusional or disingenuous.  Fear not my readers; for I am neither of those things. 

 Love has been the subject of countless stories and poems.  Shakespeare describes it thusly:

 “Love is a smoke raised with the fumes of sighs;

Being purged, a fire sparkling in lovers’ eyes;

Being vex’d, a sea nourish’d with lovers’ tears:

What is it else? A madness most discreet,

A choking gall and persevering sweet.

 Romeo and Juliet, II, 1.

Until the mid-19^th century, it is fair to say that while experienced by millions, there could not have been a fully scientific understanding of the function and mechanisms producing romantic love.  The Apostle Paul disparaged it, claiming that it was a distraction from an individual’s duty to serve the lord¹.  Yet despite Paul’s admonishments, we know that passionate, romantic love is found in all cultures². This suggests that the brain’s capacity for this is ancient.  If we view romantic love as part of the continuum of intimacy and sexual gratification, then the link to reproduction can be easily seen. Once a link to reproduction is agreed upon, then it also follows that the process of intimacy, sexual gratification, romantic love must have been under natural and sexual selection.

Evidence that pair bonding has evolutionary significance is demonstrated by its widespread occurrence in species that provide parental care to their young.  Indeed, it has been argued that pair-bonding is an important adaptation that facilitates certainty of paternity for males in a variety of species.  For fertilization to occur, insemination and ovulation must occur at the same time.  It turns out that the same hormonal changes, such as alterations of estrogen and progesterone levels which regulate the maturation of an egg also play crucial roles in enhancing female sexual receptivity³.

In the classic work, The History of Human Marriage, Westermarck describes how multiple legends on the origin of human marriage relate to regulating promiscuity⁴. For example in the Mahabharata (from India): “women were unconfined, and roved about at their pleasure, independent.  Though, in their youthful innocence, they went astray from their husbands, they were guilty of no offense for such was the rule in early times.”  But Swetaketu, son of the Rishi Uddalaka, could not bear this custom, and established the rule that thenceforward wives should remain faithful to their husbands and husbands faithful to their wives.  He also gives examples from Chinese culture: “…in the beginning men differed in nothing from other animals in their way of life.  As they wandered up and down the in the woods, and women were in common, it happened that children never knew their fathers, but only their mothers.  The emperor Fou-hi abolished, however this indiscriminate intercourse of the sexes and instituted marriage.”  Similar stories are recounted from the Greeks and the Egyptians.  Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, addresses what he considered the immorality amongst the Greeks (Gentiles) and he made the same statement as Swetaketu and Fou-hi⁵.

These accounts illustrate why males should be interested in formal pair-bonding rituals (marriage) in human societies.  Yet they do not make it as clear why females should be as interested.  However, the evolutionary theory of human mate preference provides us with more clues.

Mate Preferences

The theory suggests that mate preferences would evolve if individuals received reproductive advantages over individuals who showed no such preferences and thus mated randomly.  For example, this has been demonstrated in many non-human species, such as the African Village weaverbird.  Males attract females by displaying his recently built nest.  He suspends himself upside down and vigorously flaps his wings to gain her attention. If the female is impressed by the flapping display she will enter the nest and inspect it, she prods, pokes, and pulls at the materials.  If the nest does not meet her standards she departs and will inspect another male’s nest. The idea here is the female weaverbird is evaluating this mate’s potential to help her successfully rear her offspring (a poor nest may not shelter, leaving the young vulnerable to the elements and predators.)

There is no reason to assume that our ancestors did not face the same issues.  Thus, if human females were to be successful they also had to solve mate preference correctly.  Due to the time it takes to rear human children, our female ancestors would have had to:

1.       Choose a man who would commit to a long-term relationship.

2.       Women who choose a mate who was flighty, impulsive, philandering, or unable to sustain relationships found themselves raising their children without a mate, and therefore might have been at a disadvantage with regard to material resources, aid, and protection.

If we are to believe the words of Swetaketu, Fou-hi, and Paul then we realize that not all human societies in all historical periods existed in conditions of monogamous marital relationships.  For example, Margaret Mead’s Coming of Age in Samoa, first published in 1928, describes the promiscuity of young Samoans (especially females⁶.)  Mead claimed that these young women regularly engaged in premarital sexual relations and that virginity was not prized in this society.  In 1983, Derek Freeman claimed that Mead’s descriptions were falsified, claiming that he had interviewed some of Mead’s original subjects who recanted their testimonies given to Mead years earlier.  More recent studies suggest that Freeman may have been the one who was fooled by the Samoans, in the sense that the influence of Western values and religion had become greater in the islands since the time of Margaret Mead.  What is clear however, is that while virginity is a highly sought after prize amongst the dominant social strata, it has less value amongst the more common people.  This means that in Samoan society, bonds between husband and wives are not as strong as they are between brothers and sisters⁷.  This makes sense from an evolutionary perspective, since with high female promiscuity a husband cannot be sure that any child of his wife was fathered by him.  Uncles, on the other hand, know that their sister’s child does share their ancestry.

These variations to the rule of monogamy do not change our confidence in its application.  In humans, females invest more in offspring than males.  Robert Trivers developed theory that predicts that (1) the sex that invests more in offspring will be more discriminating or selective about mating and (2) the sex that invests least will be more competitive for sexual access to the high investing sex.  There are two caveats, we are talking about mating or reproduction here, not just sexual activity (although the two are related), the advent of modern birth control technology has allowed freer access to casual and short-term sexual relationships for women and that does not mean that they are choosing the mate they wish to raise their children with.  In addition, human reproductive investment is more equitable between males and females than in other mammals and primates.

Sexual Selection

Sexual selection operates similarly to natural selection, in that first there must be:

1.Variation in traits desirable to the other sex

2. The variation must be heritable

3. Mates must choose the traits, and thereby lead to greater reproductive success in those that carry them.

Women must be able to gauge both present and future potential.  Evolution would have favored women who could choose men who possessed those attributes that conferred benefits, such as: physical prowess, athletic skill, industriousness, kindness, empathy, emotional stability, intelligence, social skills, sense of humor, kin network, and social status and disliked men who imposed costs, such as: having children already, bad debts, bad temper, selfish disposition, and promiscuous proclivities. Women must also be able to access these characteristics, particularly if men are able to deceive women.  The difficulty of choosing results from the fact that all people are combinations of positive and negative traits and therefore these trade-offs must be integrated into any choice of a mate.

Adaptive Problems in Long-Term Mating and Hypothesized Problems

 

Adaptive Problem	Evolved Mate Preference
Selecting a mate who is able to invest	Good financial prospectsSocial Status Older age Ambition/industriousness Size, strength, athletic ability
Selecting a mate who is willing to invest	Dependability and stabilityLove and commitment cues Positive interactions with children
Selecting a mate who is able to physically protectself and children.	Size (height)Strength Bravery Athletic ability Kin networks Social Status
Selecting a mate who will show good parenting skills	DependabilityEmotional Stability Kindness Positive interactions with children
Selecting a mate who is compatible	Similar valuesSimilar ages Similar personalities

 

After Buss 1999⁸.

 

Female Preference for economic resources

Among humans the evolution of women’s preferences for a permanent mate with resources would have three required preconditions, resources must be:

 

1. 1. accruable
   2. defensible
   3. controllable by males

 

Secondly, males must have differed in their holdings and willingness to invest these holdings in a woman and her children. These requirements are easily met by humans.  Territory, tools, are acquired, defended, monopolized, and controlled by men worldwide.  Men differ tremendously in the amount of resources they control, from the homeless to the ultra-wealthy.  This has been true historically, even from hunter-gatherer society.  Men also differ widely in their willingness to invest their time and resources in long-term relationships.

Women gain more resources for their children from a single spouse (or sequential spouses) than from several temporary sex partners.

Human males invest in their wives and children more than any other primates.  In other species females acquire food and shelter since males do not share those with their mates, conversely, human males provide food, shelter, defend territory, and protect children.  They also tutor their children in sports, hunting, fighting, hierarchy negotiation, friendship, and social influence. Females must identify cues to signal a man’s possession of these resources.  The cues can be indirect, including cues that signal a man’s upward mobility – physical, athleticism, health, social – such as reputation, direct possession of economic resources is the most obvious cue.

Evidence

In a 1939 study American men and women rated 18 characteristics for a desirable marriage partner.  Women rated good financial prospects as important, men rated it as desirable, but not really important. (scale women 1.80, men 0.90). In 1985, in a similar study, women rated it 1.90, and men 1.02.  Personal ads in newspapers confirm this. In a study of 1,111 personal ads, female advertisers seek financial resources 11 times more than males.  In a cross cultural study of 37 cultures on 6 continents and 5 islands with populations as diverse as coast-dwelling Australians to urban Brazilians, to South African Zulus, some cultures were monogamous (Spain and Canada), others were polygamous (Nigeria and Zambia), and countries were co-habitation is as common as marriage (Sweden and Finland) and places were this is severely frowned upon (Bulgaria and Greece), total sample of 10,047 individuals.  The variables included: geography, political systems, ethnicity, religious groups, and all systems of mating.  Overall women valued financial resources 100% more than men.

Female Preference for High Social Status

Often evolutionary anthropologists use traditional hunter-gatherer societies as a model of what our ancestral societies might have been like. These suggest that our ancestral societies had clearly defined social dominance hierarchies, with resources flowing freely to those at the top, and trickling down to those at the bottom. There is evidence of the existence of social hierarchy in the linguistic analysis of many groups, the term “head men” or “big men” is found in various South Asian languages, Sanskrit, Hindi, and several Dravidian languages, in North America, we see it in Wappo, Dakota, Miwok, Natick, Choctaw, Kiowa, and Osage; as well as in South America in Cayapa, Chatino, Mazahua, Mixe, and many others.

Therefore, social dominance hierarchy was an ancestral condition for all humans (in other words this behavior had been fixed in Africans before anyone began migrating out of the African continent), thus amelioration of social hierarchy is a derived or recent condition (where this can be said to exist, if it does really exist?)  Thus the theory predicts that women tend to desire high social status males because this is a cue to their control of resources. Better social status brings more food, territory, and superior health.  Greater social status bestows on children social opportunities missed by children of lower ranking males, for male children worldwide, access to better quality mates typically accompanies families of higher social status.

A study of 186 societies ranging from Mbuti pygmies to Aleut Eskimos showed that higher status men had greater wealth, more wives, and provided better nourishment for their children.  Women in the US express a preference for high social status or high status profession, only slightly less important than good financial prospects.  In one study of 5,000 college women listed as desirable characteristics of mate: status, prestige, rank, position, standing, station, and high place; considerably more than men. Women at the University of Michigan in 1989 rated 67 characteristics for both short-term casual sex versus a long-term marriage prospects. In this study likelihood of success in a profession and likelihood of promising career were ranked at 2.60 and 2.70 on a 3.0 scale for a potential marriage partner, but only 1.10 and 0.40 in a casual sex partner.

American women place a great deal of emphasis on education and professional degrees – characteristics that are strongly linked to social status.  In that same Michigan study women said that lack of education was highly undesirable in a husband, giving it an average rating of –2.39. In other words the cliché that women prefer to marry doctors, lawyers, professors and other professionals corresponds to reality.  Women shun men who are easily dominated by other men, or who fail to command the respect of the group.

Male age is also a good indicator of his access to resources.  In 37 cultures examined women favored men and average of 3.5 years older.  Older men generally have higher access to resources, in contemporary Western societies, male income generally increases with age.  American males who are thirty generally make $14,000 more than men who are twenty.

Males in Positions of Power

Marriage patterns in modern America suggest that males with resources can actualize their preferences.  High status males can frequently select women a few decades younger (e.g. Rod Steward, Mick Jagger, Warren Beatty, and Jack Nicholson, for example.)

Studies have examined the impact of male occupational status on the physical attractiveness of the women they marry.  Men in higher social categories can marry women far more attractive than men in lower categories.  In fact, a man’s occupation is the best predictor of the attractiveness of the woman he marries. 

This fact is recognized by advertisers who exploit the universal appeal of beautiful, youthful women.  Although Madison Avenue is charged with advancing an arbitrary standard of beauty that others must live up to, they are not responsible for the standard, it is evolved and they employ it to their purposes. Indeed this is an example of cultural evolution driven by biological mate preferences; advertisers whose models more closely approach our biological mate preference images will be more successful.  So eventually, all existing firms will be doing this (e.g. see Cosmopolitan).

An experiment asked two groups of men to rate the attractiveness of their current romance partners.  One group of men was shown pictures of women of average attractiveness and the second group was shown pictures of women who were highly attractive.  The men in the 2^nd group rated their own romance partners as less attractive than the men shown pictures of women of average attractiveness.  They also rated themselves as less committed to their romance partners, as compared to the men who viewed average pictures.

The reasons for these changes come from the unrealistic nature of the images and from the psychology of men.  The few women chosen for these ads come from a cast of thousands.  In many cases, thousands of pictures are taken for each woman, Playboy takes 6,000 pictures for each monthly magazine and of these a few are selected for publication. So men are seeing, the most attractive women, in the most attractive pose, in the most attractive setting, that has been airbrushed to conform to male desires.  Contrast such images to what men would have seen 100,000 years ago.  Under these conditions a male might have seen a dozen or so highly attractive women in his life time.  Thus the presence of a relative abundance of attractive women today could reasonably induce a man to consider switching mates, but that was highly unlikely when these mating preference mechanisms evolved. The presence of these images is unhealthy for women also, creating a damaging and spiraling competition with other women.  In any month’s Glamour magazine, the first pages will be dominated by beauty ads!

Effects of Men’s Preferences on Actual Mating Behavior

A recent experiment examined the responses of men to personal ads placed in two newspapers in the Midwest and the West coast.  The mean age of the respondents was 37, with a range of 26 to 58.

Men tended to respond more to women’s ads that women did to men’s.

Men received only 68% the responses of women.

Younger women received more responses than older women.

Mentioning physical attractiveness generated more responses for both sexes, but it produced significantly more responses for women, than it did for men.

Women who wrote ads that conveyed their sexual attractiveness received considerably more responses than women who did not.  For men the result was opposite.

These data support the idea that men act on their preferences, specifically when women advertise the qualities of youth and attractiveness.

Actual marriage decisions confirm the preference of men for women who are increasingly younger as they get older. Cross cultural data confirm that these patterns are general.  Averaged across all cultures for which data exist, grooms are at least 3 years older than brides.  In polygynous cultures the age difference is even greater.  Extreme examples are the Tiwi of Northern Australia, where the brides are 2 –3 decades younger.

Effect of Men’s Mate Preferences on Women’s Attraction Tactics

The theory of sexual selection predicts that the preferences of one sex are predicted to influence the forms of competition that occur in the opposite sex.  Thus if men’s preferences have exerted an important impact on mating behavior over time, then we would expect to see it in the way women behave, or compete with one another to fulfill what men want. Data that address this question come from the tactics women use to attract men, tactics that women use to derogate others, and self-descriptions of women in ads when they are seeking men.  A 1988 study examined the self-reported usage and the perceived effectiveness of 101 tactics of mate attraction.  Two samples of participants reported their tactic use, an undergraduate sample and a newlywed sample.  Appearance enhancement figured prominently in both samples of women:

I wore facial make-up.

I went on a diet and improved my figure.

I learned how to apply cosmetics.

I kept myself well-groomed.

I used make-up that accentuated my looks.

I got a new and interesting hair style.

In a separate study an independent panel of undergraduates rated these tactics on how effective they would be in successfully attracting a member of the opposite sex.  These tactics were rated as 4.71 on a 7.00 scale by women, but only 1.91 by men. A related study examined deception tactics of women, again these all revolved around physical appearance:

I sucked my stomach in when around members of the opposite sex.

I wore a hairpiece.

I wore colored contact lenses.

I dyed my hair.

I wore false fingernails.

I wore dark clothing to appear thinner.

I wore padded clothing.

This study showed that women’s use of these tactics was significantly more effective than male use of such tactics. Women also appear to be sensitive to male mate preferences in their use of derogation tactics toward other women.  A study examined the female ratings for 28 derogation tactics.  Such comments as:

Made fun of his/her appearance

Told others that he/she was fat and ugly

Made fun of the size and shape of the rival’s body

The rating scale was 1.00 (not at all effective) to 7 (extremely effective.)  Derogating a rival’s body was judged more effective when used by females (3.42) as compared to males (2.95.)  But an even larger difference appeared when derogating someone’s sexual fidelity.  Women said things like:

Called rival a tramp

Told others that she slept around a lot.

Told others that the rival was loose.

Said rival would sleep with anybody.

Calling a rival promiscuous was ranked at 4.44 effectiveness for women, but only 3.45 for men.  A second study confirmed these results, ranking derogating physical appearance at 4.15 for women to 3.69 for men, and calling someone promiscuous ranked 4.44 for women and 3.45 for men.

Summary of Mate Preference Theory

Human males have evolved tactics that help them identify a woman’s reproductive potential and future fidelity.  Signals of youth and health embody a woman’s reproductive potential: clear skin, full lips, small lower jaw, symmetrical features, white teeth, absence of sores and lesions, and small waist to hip ratio.  This preference is not universal in primates, indeed, orangutans, chimpanzees, and Japanese macaque males prefer older females who have demonstrated their ability to reproduce, whereas adolescent females receive fewer matings.

The second large problem is certainty of paternity.  Virginity is valued around the world, but it is not a universal cue.  More useful are cues to future fidelity.  Thus men around the world prefer, attractive, young, sexually loyal wives, who will remain faithful until death.  This is not a western cultural phenomenon and no exceptions to these preferences have ever been found.  This suggests that male mate preferences are evolved and are deeply engrained.  Four sources of data confirm these conclusions:

Men who respond to personal ads show higher response rates to women who claim to be young and attractive.

Men actually marry younger women, worldwide.

Women spend more time enhancing their physical appearance in the context of attracting men than any other tactic.

Women tend to derogate their rivals by attacking their physical appearances in ways paralleling male mate preferences.

Smoke and Mirrors

The evolutionary pressures concerning romantic love are clearly tied to reproduction.  This may lead some to question this conclusion with the observation that homosexual is no less strong than heterosexual love.  Granted, and this reality was described in an earlier post on this blog (dated September 2009.)  However, the capacity for romantic love evolved and it was driven by the benefits of pair-bonding for offspring survival.  The signals of this can be seen in the human brain itself. For example, the amygdala (which is considered the most primitive part of the vertebrate brain) plays a key role in processing social signals.  The nucleus accumbens and the ventral pallidum receive projections from the amydala and are crucial aspects of the brain dopaminergic reward-learning system. The working hypothesis is that the hormones oxytocin and vasopressin released during romance reinforces social signaling by linking them to the dopamine reward pathways.  In a sense we can and often do become addicted to love⁹.

What we describe as love is thought to be composed of three components (intimacy, passion, and commitment.)  This is described as Sternberg’s triangular theory.  It has been recently discovered that during the development of intimacy and passion, humans secrete sexual pheromones.  Pheromones are airborne hormones that have been shown to play important roles in virtually every non-human animal species.  For example, human females show a strong response to male androsterone when they are ovulating¹⁰.  On the other hand, human males are can sense copulins which are found in female vaginal secretions.  When males come in contact with pheromones they increase their sense of a female’s beauty and they are even more attracted to the hormone when the female is ovulating¹¹.  During the attraction phase of human mating the brain is stimulated by phenylethlamine (PEA.)  This compound acts on the dopamine reward system, but as time passes the brain builds up resistance to this chemical.  After the attraction phase (in a successful long term love affair) follows attachment and commitment. Here brain chemistry is influenced by endorphins and oxytocin.  Endorphins are hormones that are painkillers but they also produce security, tranquility, and calm. Oxytocins are produced during cuddling and physical intimacy (especially during orgasm.) Finally, after the attachment phase comes commitment.  Commitment grows rapidly and then begins to level off (again in successful love relationships.)  The production of children (especially ones that the male is confident are his) develops even greater potential for commitment.

Finally, it can be asked if romantic love is so great, than why are marriage rates declining and rates of divorce skyrocketing.   My first pass at answering this question comes from “mismatch” theory.  Mismatch theory proposes that most modern disease and behavioral pathology is resulting from the differences between the conditions in which are species evolved (small groups, hunter-gatherer, subsistence) and our modern industrial lifestyle (large anonymous society, post-industrial, abundance for some.)  In The Race Myth I discussed why there was a disparity in divorce rates between African and European Americans¹².  One factor that played a significant role (as predicted by evolutionary mate choice theory) was whether an African man was employed or not.  Employed African American men were twice as likely to be married as unemployed.  Interestingly enough a recent study out of the Duke University Center for Neuroeconomic Studies indicates that there may be a polymorphism in the brains of men that makes them more attracted to either beautiful women or money!¹³  One can imagine that in the short term being attracted to women might be advantageous but that the men more attracted to money may be those who would be the more suitable long-term female choice.  However the significance of such a result is tempered by the fact that in modern society, women are not as dependent upon having a husband to guarantee them material or emotional support for their child.  However, there are serious risks to women and children when the woman is in a relationship with a man who is not the father of her children.  For pre-school children, the risk of being killed by a stepparent is 40 – 100 times greater than for children with both natural parents¹⁴.

Conclusion

There can be no doubt that romantic love is the result of evolutionary adaptation.  Without it, it is hard to imagine how our species could have possibly survived.  Indeed, some authors conclude that our capacity to love connected with our biological requirement for mating drove the evolution of our excess capacity for thought¹⁴. Even today we are preoccupied with it.  Ever notice how when you are heartbroken how you cannot seem to avoid a song about love on the radio??  I think Pat Benatar explains all so well:

We are young, heartache to heartache we stand
NO PROMISES, NO DEMANDS
Love Is A Battlefield
We are strong, no one can tell us we’re wrong
Searchin’ our hearts for so long, both of us knowing
Love Is A Battlefield

You’re beggin’ me to go, you’re makin’ me stay
Why do you hurt me so bad?
It would help me to know
Do I stand in your way, or am I the best thing you’ve had?
Believe me, believe me, I can’t tell you why
But I’m trapped by your love, and I’m chained to your side

We are young, heartache to heartache we stand
NO PROMISES, NO DEMANDS
Love Is A Battlefield

Written by: Mike Chapman & Holly Knight

Notes

1. This is implied in his first letter to the Corinthians, 1st Corinthians, 7:32.
2. Brehm et al, Intimate Relationships, (New York, NY: McGraw Hill), 2002.
3. Debiec, J., From affiliative behaviors to romantic feelings: A role of nanopeptides, FEBS Letters 581: 2580-2586, 2007.
4. Westermarck, E, The History of Human Marriage, (London, UK: MacMillan & Co), 1903.
5. 1st Corinthians, 7:1 – 7.
6. Mead, M., Coming of Age in Samoa, 1928 (paperback, Harper Perennial), 1971.
7. Schoeffel, P, Sexual morality in Samoa and its historical transformations, in A polymath anthropologist: essays in honour of Ann Chowning, (Auckland, AU: Department of Anthropology), 2005.
8. Buss, D.M., Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind, (Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon), 1999.
9. Debiec, J., 2007.

10.  Cutler et al, Human sex attractant hormones: Discovery, research, development, and application, Psychiatric Annals 29(1): 54-59, 1999.

11.  Grammar, K, Sex and olfaction, Science 273: 313, 1996.

12.  Graves, J.L., The Race Myth: Why We Pretend Race Exists in America, (New York, NY: Dutton), 2005.

13.  Smith, D et al, Distinct Value Signals in Anterior and Posterior Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex, J. Neurosci., Feb 2010; 30: 2490 – 2495 ; doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.3319-09.2010.

14.  Daly, M and Wilson, M, Homicide, (New York, NY: Aldine de Gruyter), 1988.

Making Sense of Biology

Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution, Theodosius Dobzhansky (1973). The American Biology Teacher, 35(3), 125-129.

 “1983…A Merman I Should Turn to Be”

The rock & roll connoisseurs amongst you might recognize this as the title of one of the tracks from Electric Ladyland.  Electric Ladyland was released by MCA records in 1968 and signaled the coming of age of the Jimi Hendrix Experience; in part because it featured tracks that exceeded the AM radio play limit of 3 minutes and 30 odd seconds.  The lyrics of the song are not really relevant to this month’s digression.  Rather it is the title that alludes to the notion of intelligent hominid type life forms existing below the ocean.  Is it possible that intelligent life can exist in the ocean depths, and if so, are there any limitations to how such life would/could develop in an aquatic environment?

This question takes on even more interest when we consider that recently astronomers found a super-Earthlike planet around a nearby red dwarf. The planet is named GJ 1214b, it is about 19 times as large as Earth by volume but only 6.6 times as massive. The mass differential could be explained if the object were composed primarily of water in liquid form, with a modest amount of rocky material at its core.  The researchers have calculated that it must also have an atmosphere.  While these conditions might allow for “life” on this world, its proximity to the red dwarf, makes it slightly too hot to be habitable¹.  However, there is no reason to imagine that there may not be many aquatic planets, at distances from their suns, suitable for the evolution of life (remember that life on Earth mainly exists in our oceans!)

The Drake Equation

The Drake equation was developed to reasonably estimate the distribution of life in the universe, astronomers have developed the formula N = R_*f_pn_ef₁f_if_tL.  The equation is named after the 20th-century American astronomer Frank Drake, who conducted the first radio search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

In this formula:

Variable	Explanation
N	the number of civilizations capable of communicating across interstellar space
R*	the mean rate of star formation
fp	the fraction of stars with interplanetary systems
ne	the mean number of planets in each planetary system that are suitable for the origin and evolution of life
f1	the fraction of planets on which life can actually develop
fi	the fraction of life-bearing planets on which intelligent life has evolved
ft	the fraction of planets bearing intelligent life that can give rise to a civilization capable of interstellar communications
L	the lifetime of a technical civilization

Of these figures, only R_* is has been reasonably estimated from astrophysical studies. The estimates of the other figures are based largely on experience of the single example thus far known—life on earth. Cirkovic 2004 is somewhat critical of the formulation of the Drake equation. He particularly criticizes the absence of an evolutionary approach in the formulation of this equation.  However, using this formula, some astronomers suggest that the number of civilizations in the earth’s galaxy alone may range from a thousand to a million.  One can ask how many of these planets might be the home of “aquatic” civilizations?

The Evolution of Life

Life as we know it contains the following core components:

1. Organization [that is organization different from the general characteristics of matter.]

 2. Metabolism [utilizes energy to maintain organization, consistent with the laws of thermodynamics.]

 3. Self-replicating [no living systems can survive without reproduction, thus all living systems are subject to evolution – descent with modification.]

 4. Possess genetic code [on earth that code is DNA, deoxyribonucleic acid, however there is no a-priori reason why DNA would be the code everywhere in space.]

 The characteristics of living things on earth [or life as we know it] are:

 1. Elemental composition: H, C, O, N, P, S (note position of these elements in the periodic table) and trace elements such as Mg, Fe, etc.

 2. Molecules such as: proteins, carbohydrates, fats, and nucleic acids.

 3. Cellular organization.

 There are probably good reasons for these general characteristics to be conserved in space, at least on planets with similar mass and temperature as found on Earth. For example, Carbon is required to form polymers.  The majority of the mass of the universe is still hydrogen and helium.  Nuclear processes in star formation create heavier elements such as carbon and nitrogen, although ethanol (CH₃-CH₂-OH) is formed in interstellar dust clouds.  The frequency distribution of heavy elements in the universe follows the inverse-J shaped distribution expected of rare events (illustrated as a broken stick model, formally given by the Poisson distribution: Pr (X = k) = e^-m * m^k/k!, where K is the number of rare events, and m is the mean number of expected events over a small interval.) How do you know this?  The largest amount of chemical matter in the Universe is found in the form of H₂ gas.  Stars take H₂ gas and form He gas through nuclear fusion, however heavier elements such as C, O, Ca, FE are formed and spun out during their formation. 

Our sun is composed primarily of H and He gas (99%), the 1% left over contains traces of Fe and other heavier elements.  So it seems that the stuff from which planets form is inherited heavier matter from the fusion of earlier stars! This chemical factory occurs in the arms of spiral galaxies, were interstellar dust accumulates, and shields H₂ atoms from ultraviolet light, so that molecules like H₂0, CO, and NH₃ form.   Over 100 molecules have been found in interstellar dust clouds. Heavy elements such as uranium are formed in the shock waves of supernova explosions.

When a star is formed from cosmic dust (in nebulas) it first formed a disk of gas and dust.  When the star condenses, the dust aggregates into rocky planets, such as Earth.  Residual gas accumulates to make gas planets, such as Jupiter.  Somewhere in between these options we can imagine planets that have smaller amounts of dust and more amounts of water.  Earth was formed by the accretion of cosmic dust and meteorites.  At about 4.4 billion years ago, the core appeared.  The core and mantle drive the geothermal cycle which included volcanism.  Gases emerging from the interior produced the early atmosphere.  Continental crust formed as different elements segregated to different depths.

Earth changed drastically since its formation.  Our planet was constantly bombarded by meteors one hundred million years after it formed (4.35 byp).  At this point it studded with volcanic islands and shrouded by an atmosphere composed of CO2, with heavy clouds. About 3 billion years ago, it would have been obscured by an orange haze of methane gas produced by some of the first organisms. The elemental composition of the atmosphere on pre-biotic Earth consisted of water (H₂O), hydrogen gas (H₂), CH₄, and NH₃

The Miller-Urey experiments demonstrated that polymerization of carbon compounds was thermodynamically favored under these conditions. They also showed that amino acids could be formed by the molecules found in the Earth’s ancient atmosphere.  The basic structure of an amino acid contains a carbon by an amine group, carboxcylic acid, hydrogen atom, and a “R” group which could be any sort of carbon, nitrogen chain.

There are 23 naturally occurring Amino acids, they differ based on the chemical composition of their R group.  The R groups can be positively or negatively charged (hydrophilic) or non-charged (hydrophobic.) When amino acids are brought together they will spontaneously bond to form polymers known as polypeptides (these are the building blocks of proteins.) The polypeptides take on a three dimensional structure.  These shapes are called their secondary structure and they by necessity catalyze chemical reactions.

Thus, proteins are both autocatalytic (origin of metabolism) and self-replicating (e.g. prions or protein conformation change diseases, Kirchfeld-Jacob disease.) Thus we believe that the evolution of genetic codes probably occurred in reverse order – proteins, RNA, then DNA.  The self-replication of genetic codes automatically creates natural selection.  In other words, since codes will replicate at different rates, some codes will be favored in the world of self-replication.  Chemical mechanisms for replication are not error free (thus mutation) will occur spontaneously.

Mutation is the source of variation in genetic codes (variation is required for any evolutionary theory utilizing natural selection.) Consider the phrase: Dr. Graves sure has some crazy ideas. Do you think that you could type this phrase over 1 million times without making mistakes?  Consider how many mistakes you would make if you were constrained to accomplish this, while using the least amount of energy?

Information content of the phrase is given by 37²⁸ power.  This is determined by counting the number of letters, periods, and spaces in the phrase and considering that each space could have a total of 28 possible entries.  This is 8.12 x 10⁴³ possibilities!

Most of the random changes in the phrase if we replicate it would lead to nonsense phrases. However a small portion of them would produce phrases that are “improvements.”

Consider if we wish to evolve a new phrase:

 Dr. Graves sure has some great ideas.

 If we had a means to “select” only those reproduced “errors” that would converge on the new phrase, we find that this selection could occur in very short order. (to change crazy to great requires only changing c to g, a to e, z to a, y to t.)  The probability of this occurring in any single selected event would be (1/28 * 1/28 * 1/28 * 1/28, or 1.62 x 10^-6. However, the probability that this would never happen would be (1.0 – 1.62 x 10^-6)^x.  This number is approximately 0.999999.  The variable (x) is the number of generations of replication under selection.  This probability approaches 0 as x approaches large numbers.  This is simply a way of saying that even rare events must happen.

 

Number of replication events	Prob. of Never happening
1	0.999998
10	0.999983
100	0.84952
1,000,000	0.196532
10,000,000	0.000000

The evolution of the simplest living things on earth took at least 1 billion years (represented by organisms we know as Archaea.)  This is however an underestimate (not utilizing the time scale at which molecular events occur.)  Even if we used the time scale of bacterial replications, 30 minutes per generation, we would arrive at: 1.752 x 10¹³ generations.  Remember that this figure is also an underestimate of molecular scale. Thus there would have been ample time for the primitive earth to evolve by the means of natural selection, self-replicating molecular systems, eventually converging on systems like today’s modern cells.

Characteristics of intelligent life on Earth

To understand how intelligent life might evolve on an aquatic planet, we might ask how this occurred on Earth.  Organisms that have intelligence (however defined) share the following features:

Good neural development

Large-brained

Closed circulatory system*

Muscular, large heart*

Endothermic*

May or may not be conserved in space*

These characteristics suggest that intelligent life forms should be rare, even in the history of life on this planet.  For example, the vast majority of living things on this planet are single-celled.  Of those that are not, we see intelligence only occurring within one major taxonomic category: Animalia (the animals.)  Intelligence is quite rare within the animals, comprising 35 phyla, only two show organisms with intelligence (Mollusca; particularly class Cephalopoda and Chordata; particularly class Aves (Birds) and Mammalia (Mammals.)  Thus, within all the animal species, on our planet, intelligence is rarely observed.

Problem solving intelligence has been long-observed in the Cephalopods. Octopuses presented with a challenge of obtaining live crabs from sealed glass jars learn how to successfully extract the crabs by unscrewing the lids.  The more opportunities they are presented to do this, the faster they learn to achieve the task².  Recently, tool use has been observed in Octopuses. The veined octopuses, Amphioctopus marginatus has been filmed picking up coconut halves from the seabed to use as hiding places when they feel threatened³.  You can see the video of this at http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18281-octopuses-use-coconut-shells-as-portable-shelters.html ). Amongst the Chordates, Whales (Order: Cetacea) have shown great intelligence, however these organisms are limited in their ability to manipulate their environment due to the fact that their appendages form fins (adapted for swimming) as opposed to “hands” or tentacles in the case of the octopus.

How far could intelligent life go in an ocean?

One can imagine that somewhere in the universe there are highly intelligent aquatic organisms.  But would we ever expect Mermen or technology wielding and space traveling whales as conceived of in Star Trek: Enterprise? Seasons 3 and 4 of Enterprise revolve around an attack on Earth conducted by the Xindi.  The Xindi are from a world that includes five intelligent species (including two primate-like, one whale-like, one reptilian, and one insectoid.)  Of these, I find the idea of a technology wielding whale species most problematic, even though I concede the idea that intelligence in whales is quite highly developed.  The problem with the development of high technology in the ocean is the absence of fire.  A key milestone for the development of human civilization was the ability to smelt metals and fashion iron, bronze, copper, and steel.  These metals made possible a wide range of tools that I cannot imagine a technological society without.  Thus the only scenario under which a highly technically advanced society might exist in the oceans, is if the technology was first developed by land inhabiting organisms, which for some reason retained the ability to live in the ocean.  Indeed, this is the premise of the Hendrix ballad.  Humans forced to adapt to the life in the ocean, due to disaster which was making the land environment no longer desirable.

“Hurray I awake from yesterday
Alive but the war is here to stay
So my love Catherina and me
Decide to take our last walk thru the noise to the sea
Not to die but to be reborn
Away from the lands so battered and torn
Forever, Forever
Oh say can you see it’s really such a mess
Every inch of Earth is a fighting nest
Giant pencil and lipstick-tube shaped things
Continue to rain and cause screamin’ pain
And the arctic stains from silver blue to bloody red
As our feet find the sand
And the sea is straight ahead
Straight up ahead
Well it’s too bad that our friends can’t be with us today
Well it’s too bad
The machine that we built
Would never save us that’s what they say
That’s why they ain’t comin’ with us today
And they also said it’s impossible
For a man to live and breathe underwater
Forever was a main complaint
Yeah and they also threw this in my face they said
Anyway you know good and well
It would be beyond the will of God
And the grace of the king
Grace of the king
YEAH
OOO…”

From: 1983…(A Merman I Should Turn to Be), Jimi Hendrix, Electric Ladyland, MCA Records.

Notes

1. David Charbonneau et al., A super-Earth transiting a nearby low-mass star; Nature 462, 891-894 (17 December 2009) | doi:10.1038/nature08679; Received 20 October 2009; Accepted 17 November 2009.

2. Fiorito G, von Planta C, and Scotto P, Problem solving ability of Octopus vulgaris Lamarck (Mollusca, Cephalopoda), Behav. Neural Biol. 53(2): 217-30, 1990.

3. Finn, J.K, Tregenza, T, and Norman, M.D, Defensive tool use in a coconut carrying Octopus, Current Biology, vol. 19, R1069, 2009.

Making Sense of Biology

Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution, Theodosius Dobzhansky (1973). The American Biology Teacher, 35(3), 125-129.

 

Promoting the Dialog Between Science and Religion

 

Given the recent furor caused by the publication of Richard Dawkin’s The God Delusion 2008, one may be surprised that any evolutionary biologist would be invested in promoting a dialog between science and religion.  Actually, a significant percentage of evolutionary biologists have no difficulty discussing their views in a respectful way with people of faith (and I happen to be one of them.)  In this sense I recommend, Kenneth Miller’s Finding Darwin’s God 1999, as starting point for those interested in this topic.

 

This dialog has important consequences for those who are interested in redressing the underrepresentation of minorities in science.  There is a large fraction of religiously devout African Americans, Hispanics, and American Indians.  An unwillingness to engage in the science and religion dialog will mean that you will have limited effectiveness in working to reverse underrepresentation in science in these communities.

 

In this regard, I was recently asked to deliver the keynote address on the 118^th anniversary of the founding of Historic St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Cleveland, Ohio.  The parishioners asked me to address an important issue in the ongoing role of the urban church.  What follows was my address:

 

The International Year of Science and the Historic Church

 

Dr. Joseph L. Graves Jr.

Dean, Division of University Studies & Professor Biological Sciences

Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science, Section G: Biological Sciences, North Carolina A&T State University

 

Preamble: How shall I be judged?

 

First let me state that it is a great honor to have been asked to deliver this address on the event of the 118^th Anniversary of the Historic St. Andrew’s Church.  I have lectured in some of the great university halls of the world, Harvard, Edinburgh, and Oxford and I have spoken before many different congregations (from Unitarian to Baptist.) Indeed, I have two cousins who are Baptist ministers and I promise that my remarks today will not emulate theirs with respect to time.  I have been interviewed by correspondents in print and video media.  In all these venues I have endeavored to adhere to a simple principle: speak the truth, as best I know it.  This practice has not always made me popular; indeed I have often been ridiculed and vilified.  I cannot even predict how your congregation will respond to these few words I will humbly offer today.  However, I have never expected everyone to agree with my vision.  My abiding hope is that while I my views may not be always favorably received by the great princes among men, that they will always be heard favorably by those they oppress.  In this way I hope to serve God. 

 

The International Year of Science

 

The year 2009 has been christened: “The International Year of Science.” This is to commemorate the following historical events:

 

The 400th anniversary of the publication of Johannes Kepler’s first two Laws of Planetary Motion.

 

The 400th anniversary of Galileo’s first use of a telescope to study the skies.

The 200th anniversary of Darwin’s birth and the 150th Anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species.

The 200th anniversary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln who  founded  the National Academy of Sciences, as well as creating the Land grant system of agricultural colleges through signing the Morrill Act.

The 100th anniversary of the discovery of the Burgess Shale by the paleontologist Charles D. Walcott.

In historical context it should be recognized that many practitioners of Christianity rejected these scientific advances.  For example, the Holy Roman Church rejected Galileo’s observations gained by use of the telescope.  Galileo viewed craters and other “imperfections” on the surface of the moon.  Church dogma was that the moon had to be unblemished and perfect.  The church also rejected the Copernican model of the solar system (Sun at the center.)  Galileo was imprisoned and threatened with Excommunication for exposing the idea that the Earth moved and not the Sun.  It is rumored that at his trial in which he repudiated the Copernican view that he whispered to the Bishop “and yet it moves…”

Yet no scientist has been more misunderstood and reviled than Charles Darwin.  Darwin did not invent the concept of organic evolution.  The Catholic scientist Jean Baptiste Lamarck advanced an evolutionary scheme 50 years before Darwin.  For Lamarck the creator had imbued all living things with an innate capacity for self-improvement.  Lamarck’s mechanism of change was the “inheritance of acquired characteristics.” When English scientists demonstrated that Lamarck’s mechanism was wrong, they turned against the notion that species could change. 

In 1859 Charles Darwin proposed the means by which new species are formed, “descent with modification” by the means of natural selection.  In the Origin of Species, Darwin makes no claims about how life began.  His focus was on how new species arise, given that life exists.  Again, despite popular misconception, religious condemnation of his idea was not universal. 

In England, theological response to Darwin depended upon how you viewed the role of God in the natural universe.  Some claimed that God’s role was more direct and outlined literally in scripture; whereas others claimed that God’s role in the universe is mediated by natural laws and that scripture as applied to nature must be “symbolic.” As evidence of the fact that Darwin was not so reviled by the Church of England, he was buried in Westminster Abbey, alongside other state heroes and great scientists.

Finally, around the same time that Darwin was working out the Origin of Species, Gregor Mendel worked out the laws of heredity.  Gregor Mendel was a Catholic Priest of the Augustinian Order.  He was trained in mathematics and biology at the University of Vienna under Professor Franz Unger.  Mendel was convinced that evolution was true and did his experiments to demonstrate how evolution occurred through genetic change.

The examples I have just given of Galileo, Lamarck, Darwin, and Mendel are to illustrate that there is nothing inherently anti-religious in science.  Unfortunately there are many Christian practitioners who have been advancing this false argument.  For example, Darwin’s reception by the religious community in America was and still is mainly negative.  In our country, the majority of Protestants are Biblical literalists and fundamentalists.   About 53% of all religious people in America are Protestant and of these 62% belong to Biblical literalist congregations. Biblical literalists believe that the Earth is less than 10,000 years old and that life was created in six twenty-four hour days.  This view is called special creationism.  Sociological research indicates that education, class, and geographic factors correlate with adherence to creationism.  It is also likely that acceptance of this view is strongly influenced by the ethnicity/socially-constructed race of the respondent.

African Americans generally belong to more fundamentalist/Biblical literalist Christian denominations.  For example, 85% of African Americans report themselves as Christian, with membership in Protestant denominations at 78% (15% evangelical, 4% mainline, and 59% historically black churches.) Only 5% of African Americans report as Catholics, 1% as Jehovah Witnesses, 1.5% as Mormons and other Christians.)  If we assumed that all the Catholics followed the Papal edict concerning evolution, then based on these figures, we should expect less than 10% of African Americans to have no religious objection to evolution. This percentage would be the lowest for any American ethnic group except for American Indians (lower than European Americans, Hispanics, and Asian Americans.)

Anti-science orientation and low performance of African Americans

One’s willingness to accept the scientific evidence that validates evolutionary biology is the acid-test for one’s ability to reason scientifically.    For example, in 1897 W.E.B. DuBois, one of the greatest African American thinkers of the 19^th and early 20^th century wrote an essay on the Conservation of Races.  This essay spoke to the notion that humans were much more alike than they were different.  He based the scientific aspect of this argument on Charles Darwin’s Descent of Man published in 1871.

The data I have just mentioned suggests that few African Americans pass this test, in part because of the predominance of Biblical literalist religious practice in our community.  Clearly not all Christians are literalists and those voicing no religious objection to evolution include:

1. Catholic Church: Pope John Paul II Message to the Pontifical Academy 1996.
2. United Presbyterian Church USA 1982
3. Lutheran World Federation Statement 1965
4. The General Convention of the Episcopal Church Resolution on Evolution 1982

I have worked with representatives of these denominations to defend science education.  In 2001 I helped lead a consortium of scientific and religious organizations to protect the teaching of evolution in the Arizona Public Schools. 

At present there are few professional scientists in the African American community.  Only 3% of Ph.D. level scientists are African American.  Many disciplines have never produced an African American (I was the first African American in evolutionary biology, 1988.)  Between the years of 1996 – 2005, the percentage of Ph. Ds earned by African Americans in math, physics, astronomy, chemistry, and biological sciences were 2.5, 2.0, 0.9, 3.5, and 3.0% respectively.  The lack of African American scientists means that many churches do not have any members who are scientists and therefore might possibly serve as role models for African American youth.

Overall, the United States is not performing well in science. The international ranking of the United States is now 12^th of 19 modern industrialized nations on the TIMMS assessment.  Within the United States, measures of science proficiency indicate that African Americans are 23.1% lower than that of European- and Asian Americans on the 2005 National Assessment of Educational Progress. 

Why is it important to champion scientific careers and general literacy?

 

I have participated in the American Association for the Advancement of Science Dialog Between Science and Religion.  This dialog included scientists, philosophers, and theologians representing many different religious faiths and denominations.  The dialog concluded that there is no necessary reason for science and religion to be at odds.  Science and the scientific method focus on phenomena in nature.  The method of science, observation, hypothesis, experiment, and theory-formation are of no use in religious reasoning.  Conversely, religious thinking which focuses on our relationship to God (which by definition is a supernatural concept) plays no role in evaluating scientific investigation.  Confusing scientific and religious investigation demeans them both.

More than any time in our species history, scientific investigation will impact our economic and social well-being. Real harm is occurring to the African American community because of its scientific illiteracy and superstitious beliefs.  For example, some fundamentalists believe that the HIV virus is a curse upon homosexuals authored by God.  Others believe that HIV is a genetically engineered virus designed to specifically kill African Americans.  In the case of the former belief, homosexuals are shunned by many in the African American community.  In response to this, many of these homosexuals have adopted the so-called “down-low” life style.  As “down-low” individuals they practice even more risky sexual behavior, therefore hastening the spread of the disease.  Thus because of this false belief, people are dying who might not have died otherwise.  The latter belief perpetuates the “victim” mentality that still operates in broad sectors of the African American community.  Victim belief strips individuals of responsibility for their own actions, since the government and society are “out to get them.”

We also know that unscientific thinking perpetuates racism.    The majority of American college students have little education regarding human biology.  For example, a 1992 poll that found that significant number of college students believed that the color of a person’s skin depended on whether God favored or punished their ancestors.  Researchers at Arizona State University found that 18.4% of their undergraduates agreed with or were not sure that dark skin resulted from God’s curse.  

No one in the congregation should think that I am giving scientists a free pass on this issue.  I continue to rebut pseudoscientific claims about race authored by reputed scientists and medical practitioners.  My most recent publication will appear in the Review of Black Political Economy and will focus on the false use of race in biomedical research.  On Friday night last I received a call from one of my colleagues about just such an article that has been published in the journal Medical Hypotheses. So long as there is ongoing racial inequality in America, the few African Americans trained in this arena will never be idle.

Why must the church help end the false polarization between science and religion?

The answer to this question is not simple, but well worth considering.  In an article entitled: Black Theology in American Religion, Professor James Cone wrote about a major difference in the way European- and African American theology developed through American history.  Cone argued that African Americans focused on “the true meaning of the gospel as God’s liberation of the oppressed from bondage.”  We saw the embodiment of African American theology in the civil rights movement, especially in the form of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.  Dr. King organized his ideas around the concept of love, justice, liberation, hope and redemptive suffering.  He also operated in the certainty of the notion that God had not left his world in the hands of evil men.

It is in the latter sense that I may disagree with Dr. King.  I argue that God left his world in the hands of men (and women), but men who have the capacity to choose to do great evil or great good.  Unfortunately our history has been dominated by individuals and groups choosing to inflict great evil on their neighbors.  It is important to understand that in the 21^st century much of that evil may be inflicted via the medium of science and technology.  Therefore it is imperative that historically underserved people be a part of the process to help men choose to do “good” with the science.

Ironically, the question of whether evil or good is done resides in the hands of those who are having evil perpetrated upon them and those who stand by and watch evil being perpetrated. Case in point, the Civil Rights movement helped to advance the cause of all oppressed Americans.  This occurred only when African Americans refused to be treated as second class citizens.  For example, in 1960, four freshmen students at North Carolina A&T College sat down at a Woolworth’s counter in downtown Greensboro and began the student sit-in movement.  We commemorate the 50^th anniversary of their actions in January 2010.  Much is written about their courage, but less is written about the women of the White Women’s College of North Carolina (today known as UNC Greensboro.)  Many of these women braved insults and threats of physical violence from the Klan to march cross town and sit-in with the A&T students.  They did not sit idly by.

Some scholars are arguing that many of the gains of that movement are being lost.  While the first non-European Americans sit in the White House, increasing levels of poverty, ignorance, violence, and disease plaque the African American community.  This has occurred due to the decline in the African American middle class, which historically included health professionals, lawyers, entrepreneurs, business professionals, and clergy. 

I argue that in the 21^st century it is imperative that this middle class include an increasing number of research scientists.  It is precisely here where African American churches could play a crucial role.  This will only occur however if these churches recognize the importance of scientific inquiry and that training our youth to pursue this profession does not threaten religion. 

Indeed, it is precisely here where the most progressive denominations such as the Episcopalians may have their greatest impact.  Assaults on the teaching of science need to be exposed for what they are, not science versus religion, but actually theological debates upon the nature of God.  Fundamentalists would have us deny the evidence of our senses and logic.  They portray God as a charlatan or joker.  This is not my vision of the Supreme Being capable of authoring all the rules of nature.  God would not provide us with a rational mind, and then tell us not to us it!

It is absolutely essential that African Americans be involved in shaping the policies around emerging scientific issues.  Some of these, such as climate change, could lead to the increased suffering of millions, if not the very extinction of our species. 

What practical things might the church do?

The hour is late and the task is large.  I certainly do not argue that African American churches by themselves will be able to solve the achievement gap in science alone.  However, there are many positive things that can be done (and some of these things are already being done.)

1. Any program that the church maintains which helps kids stay in school could produce a future scientist.
2. If you have members of your congregation that are trained in mathematics, then they could tutor children who need help.  Math is the gateway skill for careers in science.
3. Expose your youth to great scientists and the importance of their discoveries.  These should include (but not be limited to) African Americans such as Dr. George Washington Carver, Earnest Everett Just, or current day profiles such as Jim Gates, or Fatimah Jackson.
4. Start a chess club and get involved/start other academic competitions such as Math and Science Olympiad.  Make sure that your local newspaper and television stations cover these competitions.  Place notes in your newsletter honoring students who succeed in these venues or who maintain strong grades in science.
5. Start a math/science scholarship program – even if you only send one child to college that is one is more than would have gone otherwise.
6. Begin a parenting class for young couples – include information about best practices on how to help young children learn.

 

This is by no means an exhaustive list.  However implementing any of these things will improve the situation.

In conclusion, I would like to leave you considering the past and future roles of the African American church.  There is an ongoing theological debate concerning how much the church should be concerned with the issues of social justice?  My own take, as with that of Professor Cone, is that the most unique feature of African American churches has been their answer.  The conditions of slavery and Jim Crow meant that the African American church could not avoid focusing on these issues.  The concerns in 2009 are new, but the focus is old.

Congratulations to the Congregation of Historic St. Andrews Church on this your 118^th Anniversary in helping to make the world a better place as you provide spiritual comfort and guidance for all those who enter your halls.

 

Dr. Joseph L. Graves Jr.

November 29, 2009.

 

Literature Review

 

Alexander, C.C., The Ku Klux Klan in the Southwest, (Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press, 1965.

 

Ashby, L., William Jennings Bryan: Champion for Democracy, (Boston, MA: Twayne Publishers.)

 

Atran, Scott, In Gods We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.

 

Barrett, Justin L., Why Would Anyone Believe in God?, Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press, 2004.

 

Battle, J. and Bennett, M., Research on Lesbian and Gay Populations in the African American Community: What Have We Learned?, Perspectives pp. 35 – 46., 2000.

 

Berger, Peter, The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion (New York: Random House), 1969, 1990.

 

Boyer, Pascal, Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought, New York: Basic Books, 2001.Braude, B., The sons of Noah and the construction of ethnic and geographical identities in the medieval and early modern periods, The William and Mary Quarterly, Third Series, Vol. 54, No. 1, pp. 103-142, 1997.

 

Brazelton, E.W., Frandsen, J.C., Mckown, D.B., Brown, C.D.; Interaction of Religion and Science: Development of a Questionnaire and the Results of It’s Administration to Undergraduates, College Student Journal, Vol. 33, 1999.

Causland, D.M., Adam and the Adamite, or the Harmony Between Scripture and Ethnology, (London: Richard Bentley), 1868.

Chalmers, D.M., Hooded Americanism: The History of the Ku Klux Klan, (New York, NY: Franklin Watts), 1965.

 

Chatters, J., The recovery and first analysis of an early Holocene human skeleton from Kennewick, Washington, American Antiquity 65(2), pp. 291-316, 2000.

 

Cone, J.H., Black theology in American Religion, J. American Academy of Religion LIII/3.

 

Darwin, C., The Voyage of the Beagle: Charles Darwin’s Journal of Researches (1839), edited by J. Brown and M. Neve (New York, NY: Penguin Classics), 1989.

Darwin, C., On the Origin of Species: By means of Natural Selection  or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, (London: J. Murray), 1859.

Darwin, C., The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex (London: J. Murray), 1871.

De Camp, L.S., The Great Monkey Trial, (Garden City, NJ: Doubleday), 1968.

Desmond, A. and Moore, J., Darwin, (London: Michael Joseph), 1991.

Du Bois, W.E.B., “The Conservation of Races”, 1897, in W.E.B.: A Reader, ed. A. Paschal, (New York, NY: Collier/MacMillan), 1971.

Eiseley, L., Darwin’s Century: Evolution and the Men Who Discovered It, (New York, NY: Double Day/Anchor Books), 1961.

Ellwanger, P., What has evolution done for the black man?, on Origins: Creation Evolution & Some of their Connections, http://hometown.aol.com/thomasaquinas87/origins/racism/black.pdf, 2008.

Feldman, G., Politics, Society, and the Klan in Alabama, 1915 – 1949, (Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press), 1999.

 

Friedman, R.E., Who Wrote the Bible? (New York, NY: Harper/San Francisco Press), 1997.

 

Fullilove, M.T. and Fullilove, R.E., Stigma as an obstacle to AIDS action: The Case of the African American Community, American Behavioral Scientist, 42(7): 1117-1129, 1999.

 

Graves, J.L., Why We Should Teach Our Students About Race, Reports of the National Center for Science Education, v22 n3 p23-26 May-Jun 2002.

 

Graves, J.L.  The Emperor’s New Clothes: Biological Theories of Race at the Millennium, soft cover edition, 2^nd printing with a new preface by the author, Rutgers University Press, 2005a.

 

Graves, J.L., The Race Myth: Why We Pretend Race Exists in America, soft cover edition with a new preface by the author (New York, NY: Dutton Books), 2005b.

 

Hebel, S. and Schmidt, P., Bob Jones U shifts its policies on interracial dating by students, The Chronicle of Higher Education, March 17: A39, 2000.

 

Harris, G., The plurality of the races, and the distinctive character of the Adamite species, Anthropological Review, Vol. 5, No. 17, pp. 175-187, 1867.

 

Harrold, F.B. and Eve, R.A., Cult Archaeology and Creationism: Understanding Pseudoscientific Beliefs About the Past, (Iowa City, IA: University of Iowa Press), 1995.

 

Hick, John, An Interpretation of Religion: Human Responses to the Transcendent, second edition, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004.

 

Hick, John, The New Frontier of Religion and Science: Religious Experience, Neuroscience and the Transcendent, New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2006.

 

Hull, D., Darwin and his Critics: The Reception of Darwin’s Theory of Evolution by the Scientific Community, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), 1973.

 

Irons, P., The Courage of Their Convictions, (New York, NY: The Free Press), 1988.

 

Lawson, A.E. and Worsnop, W.A., Learning about evolution and rejecting a belief in special creation: Effects of reflective reasoning skill, prior knowledge, prior belief, and religious commitment, Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 29: 143-66, 1992.

 

Mazur, A., Believers and disbelievers in evolution, Politics and the Life Sciences 23(2): 55 -61, 2005.

 

McIver, T. The Protocols of Creationism, Skeptic 2: 76-87, 1994.

 

Mecklin, J.M., The Ku Klux Klan, (New York, NY: Harcourt Brace Co.), 1924.

 

Miller,J.D., Scott, E., and Okamoto, S., Public Acceptance of Evolution, Science 313: 765-766, 2006.

 

Moore, J.S., Pre-Glacial Man and Geological Chronology, (Dublin: Hodges, Smith, and Foster), 1868.

 

Moore, R., Two perspectives on teaching evolution: America’s anti-evolution movement, Academic Questions, Spring: 69 -78, 2002.

 

Moore, R., Teaching Evolution: Do State Standards Matter? BioScience 52(4): 378-81, 2002.

 

Moore, R., Racism and the public’s perception of evolution, Reports of the National Center for Science Education, 22(3): 16-18, 23-25.

 

Nye, Malory, Religion: The Basics, New York: Routledge, 2003.

 

Pew Research Center, Optimism About Black Progress Declines: Blacks see growing values gap between poor and middle class, http://pewsocialtrends.org/pubs/700/black-public-opinion, November 13, 2007.

 

Pride, R.A. and Vaughan, H., Neighborhood Again? Race, educational interest, and traditional values, Urban Education 34(3): 389 – 410, 1999.

Rice, A.S., The Ku Klux Klan in American Politics, (Washington, DC: Public Affairs Press), 1962.

 

Rolston, Holmes III, Genes, Genesis and God: Values and Their Origins in Natural and Human History, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.

 

Rosenberg, E.M., The Southern Baptists, (Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press), 1989.

 

Smith, W.B., The Color Line: A Brief in Behalf of the Unborn, (New York, NY: McClure, Phillips & Co.), 1905.

 

Stokes, J.P. and Peterson, J.L., Homophobia, self-esteem, and risk for HIV among African American men who have sex with men, AIDS Education and Prevention, 10 (3): . 278-292, 1998.

Making Sense of Biology

Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution, Theodosius Dobzhansky. (1973). The American Biology Teacher, 35(3), 125-129.

 

Charles Darwin on the Races of  Man

In 2001, I testified before the Louisiana House of Representatives to deflect a motion sponsored by State Representative Sharon Westin Broome.  This motion declared that Charles Darwin was himself a racist and the father of all modern scientific racist ideology. House Concurrent Resolution (HCR) 74 stated that “the writings of Charles Darwin…promoted the justification of racism” And urged public schools in Louisiana to address “the weaknesses of Darwinian racism.” Elsewhere, the resolution asserted “Adolf Hitler and others have exploited the racist views of Darwin and those he influenced.” According to newspaper accounts, Broome linked Darwinism to the Ku Klux Klan and the 1963 church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama. On May 1st, the Louisiana House Education Committee passed HCR 74 by a 9-5 vote.  

Broome’s ties to Louisiana special creationist interests suggested that this resolution was designed to be an assault on the teaching of evolution, not a truly anti-racist resolution. It went to the full House on May 8, 2001.  My testimony and that of other scientists led to the house rejecting the notion that Darwin was responsible for the birth of scientific racism. The motion passed as a general condemnation of racism, but with no mention of Darwin¹.   

Creationists have attempted to distort and misrepresent Charles Darwin and evolutionary biology in every way that they possibly can.  Therefore, it is entirely appropriate on the 150^th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species, to set the record straight on what Charles Darwin actually believed concerning human biological variation and the origin of the human species.  First we must recognize that Darwin’s descent with modification vies for one of the most important scientific discoveries of the last millennium.

Arguably only the Copernican/Galilean revolution had more impact on human thought concerning ourselves and our place in the universe.  In the Emperor’s New Clothes (2001), I argued that all previously existing notions about the meaning and significance of human biological variation could not have been correct².  This is because those ideas were not rooted in a mechanism that could correctly explain how and why humans displayed different physical features.  However Charles Darwin was not simply motivated by the scientific questions surrounding the origin of species when he wrote about and discussed human beings.  Contrary to the claims of creationists, Darwin’s motivation for getting the science of human variation  correct was his life-long opposition to slavery and racism³.

Darwin’s Anti-Slavery Heritage

Charles’ paternal grandfather was the liberal polymath Erasmus Darwin.  Erasmus’s progressive views were responsible for the word “lunatic” entering the English language – from his Lunar Society.  His maternal grandfather was Josiah Wedgewood who was himself an anti-slavery crusader.  Josiah was a confidant of William Wilberforce, a supporter of the former slave Olaudah Equiano, and a major financier of  anti-slavery crusader Reverend Thomas Clarkson (these three individuals are prominently featured in the recent film on Wilberforce entitled: Amazing Grace).  Josiah was responsible for the design of the Anti-Slavery Medal cast in 1787.  He used a considerable amount of his own money to distribute it.  Charles older sisters and Wedgewood aunts were also strong abolitionists, who directly connected to the international and American abolitionist movements.

Charles first significant encounter with a person of African descent was with John Edmonstone.  He learned to prepare bird specimens from lessons he received from Edmonstone in Edinburgh (Feb. – Apr. 1826). Edmonstone had traveled through the South American rain forest with noted celebrity Charles Waterston. Desmond and Moore argue that this experience was pivotal in changing Charles’ view on non-Europeans as well as predisposing him to accept the opportunity to travel the world aboard HMS Beagle.  Unlike many Europeans, Charles observed the brutality of chattel slavery directly while on the voyage of HMS Beagle (1831 – 1836.)  His condemnations of slavery and specifically his run-ins with the pro-slavery Tory, Captain FitzRoy are important themes in his Voyages of the Beagle first published in 1839.

The species question and the races of man

By 1836 Darwin was convinced that the transmutation of species had occurred.  Many of the questions he formulated while aboard the Beagle and later in his transmutation notebooks addressed questions about how this transmutation explained human varieties.  He knew that these ideas were heretical and that they place him in violent opposition to his mentors.  The prevailing view was that species were fixed special creations revealing God’s divine plan.  For example, in 1735 Carolus Linnaeus had described four sub-species of humans at the same time that he introduced binomial classification system for all organisms.  His four sub-species of humans were: Homo sapiens americanus, the Amerindians; Homo sapiens europaeus, Europeans; Homo sapiens asiaticus, Asians; and Homo sapiens afer, Africans. His explanation of how or why these groups were different was creationist.  His classification relied on morphological and behavioral features.  He found that Europeans were gentle, optimistic and inventive, while Asians were stiff and greedy.  Africans were cruel and cunning.  Linnaeus never traveled the world to make observations of these groups of humans and relied on the travel literature of his day to draw his conclusions. Yet his classification scheme was clearly hierarchical with Europeans representing the apex of humanity and Africans the abyss.

In contrast to Linnaeus the minor evolutionists of 18^th century France, such as Jean Baptiste Lamarck’s were transformationists.  They believed that God had imbued all species with an intrinsic drive to improve.  Thus species and racial lineages (15 human racial lineages) were therefore distinct, going back to protozoa.  Their mechanism for the improvement of species was the inheritance of acquired characteristics.  Jean Baptiste Bory de Saint Vincent felt that today’s chimpanzees would be tomorrow’s humans, thus the two species did not share a common ancestor.  In the same way, human races did not share common ancestry and had arrived on different pinnacles of development at different rates.

In England, Platonic thinking contributed to the core of Paley’s Natural theology.  To Plato (429 – 347 B.C.E) all things were mere shadows of perfect eternal ideas.  Thus any variation observed in nature was an illusion, and all living things were fixed in their eternal characteristics.  Thus Platonic ideas were consistent with Christian creationist thinking about the origin of human beings and their races.  At this time the dominant theological position was still Monogenism.  In this scheme there had been one act of creation (one Adam & Eve.) Therefore any observable racial differences had to be due to the influence of environment or degeneration from the perfection of creation.  This view was articulated fully and the features of human races fully described in James Cowles Prichard’s  Researches Into the Physical History of Mankind, 1826. Prichard was fiercely anti-slavery and he finished this work at just about the time Britain was outlawing the slave trade.  Darwin read Prichard while he was at Cambridge⁴.  The monogenist view was still dominant going into the 3^rd decade of the 19^th century, as shown in table 1 below.  Naturalists of this period were unsure about how much of human variation was inherited and how much was environmentally influenced, but they were in general agreement that the races of mankind belonged to one human species.

Table 1: Selected 18^th Century Naturalists on the Racial Traits of the Negroes (Relative to Europeans)

 

Name	Country/Year	Traits	Relative	Heritable?	Environment?	Separate Species?
Francois Bernier	France1684	General	Neutral	?	?	No
Gottfried Wilhelm Von Leibniz	Germany1690	General	Neutral	No	Yes	No
Henry Home, Lord Kames	United Kingdom1774	Skin color, hair, lips, smell	Inferior	Yes	No	No
Johann Friedrich Blumenbach	Germany1775	Skin color, hair, lips, smell	Neutral, no objective ranking	Yes	Yes	No
Samuel Thomas Summering	Germany1784	General	Not always inferior	Yes	No	No
Petrus Camper	Netherlands1786	Skull angle	Inferior	Yes	No	No
Georges Buffon	France1789	Skin color, intellect	Inferior	Yes	No	No
Christopher Meiners	Germany1790	General	Inferior	Yes	No	No

 

From pg. 39, Graves 2005.

Yet, at the same time, polygenism, the notion that the races of human were separate and distinct species was beginning to gain more attention.  The inferior races some theologians argued were descended from the Pre-Adamite races.  This view was favored by those in opposition with traditional religion, especially hoping to claim the scientific high ground, against the monogenists.  More importantly for the spread of polygenism, it was entirely consistent with the political aspirations of the pro-slavery forces across the world.

By the mid-1850’s as Darwin began to realize that his descent modification idea required the common descent of all existing humans, he realized that he would be coming into direct opposition with leading naturalists who might have significant impacts on the acceptance of his entire theory.  Most prominent amongst these was Louis Agassiz, the Swiss born naturalist and Harvard professor.  Agassiz had developed his adherence to the theory of polygeny in the mid-1840’s when he immigrated to America and came into contact with African American slaves.  Agassiz was so offended from his experience with these slaves that he concluded that it was impossible that these individuals could be members of the same species as Europeans.  This view would draw him into the circle of the American polygenists.  These were specifically, Samuel Morton, Professor of Anatomy, Pennsylvania Medical College, Josiah Nott, a Southern gentleman and physician, and  George R. Gliddon, the United States Counsel, Cairo.  Morton was the chief experimentalist supporting the theory of polygeny, especially through his measurements on human skulls (Crania Americana 1839 and Crania Aegyptica 1844).  Nott and Gliddon popularized polygeny via craniometry, indeed Nott was renowned throughout the slave holding south for his lectures on “niggerology.”

Agassiz supported polygeny through his theory that all animals and plants existed in zones of creation.  Agassiz was a catastrophist who thought that the fossil record of the earth was best explained by great catastrophes that destroyed all life and that life was replaced by a new creation.  This view allowed for the notion of separate “Adams” who had been created in specific regions of the world with divinely designed adaptations that made life there possible.  Thus he opposed slavery arguing that it took Africans away from tropical zones.  Josiah Nott further argued that because Africans could not adapt to North America, that slavery was a benign institution.  He cited dating claiming that the survival of slaves was actually higher than that of free blacks in the north.  This argument was prominently displayed in Nott and Gliddon’s Types of Mankind, published in 1854.  In 1856 Josiah Nott and Henry Hortze (another Swiss racialist) translated The Moral and Intellectual Diversity of Races, by Count de Gobineau into English.  This work claimed that all of human civilization could be understood by its racial characters.  Great European nations rose due to their racial purity, others could never rise because of their racial deficiency.  Gobineau claimed that Africa had never produced a great civilization.  Later Hortze would be a paid Confederate agent inside of the Anthropological Society of London, an organization that broke away from the Ethnological Society of London (of which Darwin was a member.)  It was clear that by the mid-19^th century, in conjunction with the rise of the political power of the slave holders that polygeny had become the dominant view of naturalists who studied race.

Table 2: Selected 19^th Century Naturalists on the Racial Traits of the Negroes (Relative to Europeans)

 

Name	Country/Year	Traits	Relative	Heritable?	Environment?	Separate Species?
CharlesWhite	United Kingdom1799	Skulls, sex organs, sexuality	Inferior	Yes	No	Yes
Samuel Stanhope Smith	United States1810	Skin Color, general	Inferior	No	Yes	No
James Prichard	United Kingdom1813	Skin color, civilization	Inferior	Yes	Yes	No
Sir William Lawrence	United Kingdom1823	General, civilization	Inferior	Yes	No	Yes
GeorgesCuvier	France1831	General	Inferior	Yes	No	Yes
Samuel Morton	United States1849	Skull volume	Inferior	Yes	No	Yes
LouisAgassiz	United States1850	Skin color, smell, intellect	Inferior	Yes	No	Yes
John Bachman	United States1855	Fertility of the hybrids	Equal	Yes	No	No
Josiah Nott	United States1857	General	Inferior	Yes	No	Yes
George Gliddon	United Kingdom1857	General	Inferior	Yes	No	Yes
Paul Broca	France1862	Skeletalfeatures	Inferior	Yes	No	Yes

 From pg. 44, Graves 2005.

 Darwin’s anti-slavery connections

 Throughout the 1850’s as Darwin was compiling the final evidence and arguments for the Origin, the crisis in the United States over slavery deepened.  Harriet Martineau was a feminist, abolitionist, who was also the lover and confidant of Erasmus Darwin (Charles’s older brother.)  She was a friend to the anti-slavery senator from Massachusetts, Charles Sumner.  In response to Dred Scott decision Martineau wrote: “…the whole course of American politics is determined by the slavery question⁵.”  Martineau wrote anti-slavery articles for the Edinburgh Review, which was widely read by English Whigs (including the Darwin and Wedgewood families.)  Charles views against slavery were so well known such that in 1858 he was approached by his colleague and friend W.R. Greg to write an anti-slavery piece for the Review, but refused due to his commitment to finishing the Origin⁶.

 Why no humans in the Origin?

 The elephant in the living room in the Origin of Species was its absence of discussion of human evolution.  Specifically Darwin felt that his theory would make the realization of shared common human ancestry unavoidable.  He wrote to Alfred Russell Wallace:

 I think I shall avoid [the] whole subject’, as it was too ‘surrounded  with prejudices’ even if humans do pose ‘the highest & most interesting problem for the naturalist⁷.’

 However, his chapter on hybrids was partially directed at the polygenist claims of Nott and Gliddon, but not explicitly so.  In the conclusion he states that:

 “In the distant future I see open fields for far more important researches.  Psychology will be based on a new foundation, that of necessary acquirement of each mental power and capacity by gradation.  Light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history⁸.”

 Despite Darwin’s careful avoidance of the topic, many of the post publication reviews of the Origin focused on its meaning for humans.  In addition the events of the American civil war had stimulated an Anglo-Saxonist backlash in England  including the birth of the Anthropological Society of London⁹.  Specifically in 1865 the actions of Governor Eyre against free blacks in Jamaica, which included a massacre of over 439 people, 600 floggings, and 1000 homes burned influenced Darwin to finally openly publish his views concerning human races.  This situation was made even more emotionally challenging for him due to a dispute with his own son William over Eyre.

 Another reason that Darwin now felt that he could address human evolution was that he had discovered a mechanism which he felt accounted for the observed differences, that is sexual selection.   By 1871, Darwin had completed his work devoted to human evolution entitled: The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex¹⁰.  Chapter VII of this work, On the Races of Man, was specifically directed at polygenism, as understood in the United States as well as within the ASL.  Throughout it Darwin emphasized that the likenesses of all humans in physical and behavioral categories were far greater than their differences.  He explains that utilizing the criteria that naturalists apply to other species, one could doubt whether human races were real. In this he means that naturalists have not applied any consistent criteria by which one could classify human races.  This is the racial multiplication problem, and he showed that at his time naturalists named between 2 – 63 races.  In my work I have pointed out that even in modern genetic approaches to race, this problem remains¹¹.  In this chapter he called human races, protean or polymorphic.  He further argued that most of the physical differences noticed by naturalists could not have any significance, if so they would have been removed by natural selection. 

One of the means by which creationist attempt to link Darwin to the genocides of the 20^th century appears in this chapter.  Darwin rationalized the “extinction of less civilized races” within the context of natural selection.  In this model, Darwin felt that based on Malthusian competition that the technology of more civilized races might have an advantage when then came into contact with less civilized races.  His reasoning for this was based on his own observations of what was happening to indigenous populations, such as the Australian aborigines as displaced Englishmen began to take over Australia.  However, he did not believe that natural selection always favored the “more civilized races.”  He also observed that in climates where disease resistance was important, migrants from the more civilized races might not fare better than the indigenous populations who maintained resistance to disease in that climate.  What must be recognized here is that Darwin did not claim that these actions were morally justified, but simply the result of competition.

Did Darwin get the mechanism of racial variation correct?

The Descent of Man outlines how sexual selection could account for the protean or polymorphic features of modern humans.  Sexual selection involves the traits that males and females of a species utilize to determine whom is a suitable mate. At this time, Darwin saw sexual selection mainly as resulting from male choice (and this is a clear legacy of his Victorian upbringing.)  Darwin showed that within a group of related species, NS tended to explain the features the group shares in common, while SS tends to explain those traits the group differ in.  He extended this reasoning to human racial features.  While he was generally correct about the existence of sexual selection in nature, he was not correct on is application to human geographically based biological variation.

This error resulted from the fact that no one in this time period understood the relationship between heredity and natural selection.  Ironically, Mendel’s seminal paper explaining the basic rules of genetics was published in 1866, but due to the fact in was in the German language its significance was not appreciated until well into the 20^th century.  Thus the Neo-Darwinian synthesis isn’t accomplished until the middle of the 20^th century.  This theory is necessary to understand the distribution of human genetic variability.

For example, Darwin wrote in the Descent:

“Of all the differences between the races of man, colour of skin is the most conspicuous and one of the best marked…Differences of this kind …could be accounted for by long exposure under different climates…this view has been rejected chiefly because the distribution of the variously colored races…does not coincide with corresponding differences in climate¹².”

Darwin’s mistake here resides in his yet being completely free from Lamarckian notions of inheritance.  At this time it was thought by many that if climate (solar intensity) was responsible for skin color, that Europeans living in the tropics would change their skin color.  Or conversely, Africans living in the northern climates would lose their pigmentation.  Since the time of Bernier, naturalists concerned with skin color had pointed out that this had not occurred.  Thus because Darwin didn’t have the tools of Mendelian genetics, he saw this fact as more important than it actually was. 

Natural selection easily explains the differences in skin color that we see in populations associated with solar intensity.  For example, we can show that there is a continuous change in allele 1 at the Vitamin D binding locus going from populations that inhibit the tropics to the arctic (r = 0.78; p < 0.0001.)  Vitamin D synthesis is impacted by solar intensity and skin color.  Another trait that Darwin was concerned with that is also clearly influenced by natural selection is disease resistance.  For example, high frequencies of the sickle cell anemia allele are associated with high prevalence of malaria.  However, so that no one is confused about this, neither of these traits are “racial.”  Genes that control skin color are not consistently linked to others that influence aspects of physical appearance, such as those that determine skull shape or body proportions. Thus physical variation does not define races because different portions of the genome are  selected by different factors in any given environment. For example, solar intensity may change consistently along an N – S gradient, this may impact some genetic systems, but not others. Meanwhile, other portions of the genome may be impacted by the presence of a specific parasitic disease, different diets, different rain fall, or altitude.  However, what is clear is that Darwin did not understand that natural selection was the major factor determining human geographically based genetic variation, not sexual selection.

Was Charles Darwin the Father of Scientific Racism?

In the Emperor’s New Clothes (2005) I outlined the development of subsequent scientific/social movements that claimed the imprimatur of Darwin.  For example, the Eugenics movement was pioneered by Sir Francis Galton (Charles Darwin’s first cousin.)  Social Darwinism was the development of Herbert Spencer (a man Darwin felt was an intellectual mediocrity and bore.)  Clearly, Darwin held some views in common with these individuals, but on balance, Darwin was a social progressive (as measured by the standards of the 19^th century.)  He made errors of theory and fact, not errors that were the result of deep fallacies in moral and ethical reasoning.

Indeed, I further argued that without Darwin, a proper understanding of human biological variation is impossible.  This understanding is essential to survival of the human species in the modern world. Yet, like all scientific theories, evolutionary biology can be applied for evil or good. However this is not the fault of Charles Darwin.  Scientific racism was alive and well in European derived society from the 17^th century forward.  In this time period, Darwin was one of the voices of reason opposing the exploitation and enslavement of his fellow human beings.  One of his least known quotations comes from the Voyages of HMS Beagle, when in commenting on the treatment of slaves in South America he stated:

“If the misery of our poor be not caused by nature, but by our social institutions…then great is our sin.”

Notes and References

1. Meikle, E., Louisiana HCR 74 Amended and Adopted, National Center for Science Education, http://ncseprojects.org/news/2001/05/louisiana-hcr-74-amended-adopted-00226.

2. Graves, J.L., The Emperor’s New Clothes: Biological Theories of Race at the Millennium, (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press), 2005.

3. Desmond, A. and Moore, J, Darwin’s Sacred Cause: How a Hatred of Slavery Shaped Darwin’s Views on Human Evolution, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009.

4. Ibid, pg. 54.

5. Harriet Martineau’s letters xxiii 143, 156-7.

6. Desmond and Moore 2009, pg. 301.

7. Correspondence of Charles Darwin 6: 515, 527. On Darwin and Wallace’s differing collecting techniques: Fagan, ‘Wallace’.

8. Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species, 1859, pg.  488.

9. Desmond, A. and Moore, J, Darwin: The Life of a Tormented Evolutionist, Norton, 1991.

10.  Darwin, C., The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex, Princeton University Press, 1981, original date of publication 1871.

11.  Graves, J.L., The Race Myth: Why We Pretend Race Exists in America, Dutton Books, 2005.

12.  Darwin, C., The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex; pg. 241.

Boy Scouts, Giant Sea Turtles, and the Evolution of Other-Oriented Behavior

In writing about why EvoS is such an outstanding academic program, David Wilson (2007) takes on three major misconceptions about evolution. These being that it is:
1. overly scientific and, thus, beyond comprehension for many people.
2. somehow pernicious and evil, to be used for abhorrent social agendas.
3. not relevant to one’s everyday life.

In this post, I address this third point.

As an evolutionist, I’m woefully beyond help. I can’t help but see everything in my world in terms of evolutionary principles. At a Board of Education meeting recently, I saw parents speaking up for the future of their children – clearly taking steps to ensure the success of their progeny. On a recent hike in the Gunks, I saw pockets of forest filled with giant hemlocks – taking over an ecological niche along a stream that would otherwise belong to several varieties of oaks that typify the forest. All summer long, as the corn and sunflowers disappeared – somewhat gradually – in my garden, an opulent groundhog implemented an evolutionarily advantageous strategy for surviving – quite well, in fact. I pulled a single pumpkin from the garden this year … but I digress …

While my own experience seeing evolution everywhere may be somewhat pronounced, I don’t think it’s unique. EvoS students regularly report having this same perspective applied to questions and problems across life domains. This fact may well be the core secret of the success of EvoS programs, now proliferating around the world like groundhogs on a pumpkin farm.

As a parent, I see evolution every time I think about either of my kids. Megan, 8, and Andrew, 5, are just the thrill of my life – and spending time with them and watching them grow genuinely comprise the primary focus of my attention at this life stage. And taking an evolutionary approach really adds to my understanding of who they are and why they do what they do.

Recently, I’ve become somewhat (yes, only somewhat!) intrigued by religious practices. As a highly secular, evolutionist, atheist who was not bar mitzvahed because I came from a lineage of skeptics, I’m not exactly the most religious person you might know. But my training as an evolutionist tells me that there’s something to religion. While evolutionarily informed theories of religion vary a good bit, I’ve become particularly interested in David Wilson’s (2007) conception of religion as having both a vertical dimension (dealing with the relationship between people and the supernatural) and a horizontal dimension (which pertains to how people interact with others – and the nature of social structures that encourage or discourage certain social behaviors).

In his discussion of these two dimensions of religion, Wilson makes the point that the horizontal level – comprised of a religion’s rules – is all about social interactions and social control – ultimately encouraging behaviors that promote among-group selection at a cost to within-group selection. Briefly, such social controls encourage people to be nice to others at a cost to themselves.

And religion after religion, in fact, has a good bit of this kind of “self-sacrifice for the broader group” thing going on. Jesus dying on the cross is likely the ultimate icon of this sort of other-oriented behavior – but it plays out throughout scripture in a host of religions that cut across typical geographical and cultural divides (Wilson, 2002).

Why religion, then? Why would it have evolved and come to typify our species. Successful religious groups, compared with less-successful groups, have been effective at getting their members to invest time and energy for the good of the group – at a cost to themselves. A group that does this kind of thing well will outcompete alternative groups – and come to proliferate any shared niche.

For Wilson, religion is deeply rooted in who we are – and the benefits it provided our ancestors were exactly the kind of benefits described here. Belonging to a successful religious group meant (a) that your group was likely to succeed and that (b) you and your family were likely to benefit accordingly. Group benefits trickle down to the individual.

From this perspective, then, humans have a long history of being indoctrinated into groups with several seemingly arbitrary hierarchies and social rules. These rules, traditionally framed in terms of specific religious principles, encourage group-oriented behavior and discourage individual-oriented behavior. The main lesson of such perspectives is self-sacrifice and putting the goals of the group above the goals of the individual.

I have to admit, I kind of like that! This is how I try to organize nearly all things I’m involved in. Known for its “help each other out” culture, I like to think that NEEPS is built on norms that parallel some of these fundamental features of religious organizations – encouraging group oriented behavior and discouraging selfish behavior. Maybe this is why NEEPS has been so successful.

I’ve become particularly interested in thinking about these parallels with religion with regard to raising my kids. At nearly six years old, Andrew is a positive force. He’s pretty much boy as boy can be – but he’s got a nice combination of softness, creativity, and humor to round him out. We love him. But I will say that he may not always engage in other-oriented behavior. And I’m starting to see that secular parents, such as Kathy and me, may need to take special steps given the evolution of other-oriented behavior. Religion has been the primary conduit for facilitating other-oriented behavior for generations of humans. We now are capable of having no religion. On one hand, this is great – we can think of ourselves as enlightened, and we feel we sort of “truly” understand questions such as what the universe is about and where we fit in it. That’s nice. But there may be a cost.

When it comes to fostering other-oriented behavior, religious parents have a leg up. They have the church, the preacher, the modeling of other-oriented behavior and, if that’s not enough, they have the Bible – filled with comments and parables that underscore the benefits of other-oriented behavior.

I think that secular parents may need to take specific and proactive actions to help their kids develop other-oriented ways.

Andrew started doing Boy Scouts this semester. Well, really, it’s “Tiger Scouts” – but you get the deal. He and a bunch of other 5 and 6-year old boys head to the basement of our local Catholic Church a few times a month. They stand in line. They sit in line. They are told to be quiet. They are asked to describe a situation in which they showed gratitude. They are asked to describe a situation in which they showed respect. They salute the American flag.

Yes, of course, a small part of me thinks this is almost like brainwashing! But Andrew seems to naturally connect with it – and I see a side of him in there that is very admirable. There’s not a lot of “I want this!”; “You took that from me!”; “Give me that!”; etc. Rather, there’s an implicit but powerful understanding that Andrew – and the others – will follow orders from the leaders. And you can quickly see the group benefits that will follow. Apparently, they have plans to build cars for an upcoming soap box derby. That’d be hard for one kid to do – not so hard for a well-organized group. They’re going to create a rocket and blast it into the air. Disciplined, other-oriented, respectful, behavior on the part of the kids will surely help make this happen.

Given the conspicuously non-religious nature of our household, I’m (tentatively!) seeing Tiger Scouts as a good thing for Andrew. To develop as moral beings, we need early life lessons in sacrificing oneself for the broader group or community. You don’t have to be religious to have your kids learn these lessons – but having them take part in long-standing, organized groups, such as the boy scouts – even if there may be some religious undertones – may help shape the kind of other-oriented patterns that will help make them solid and dependable citizens of the global community.

Speaking of the global community, I’m proud to say that Andrew is engaging in self-sacrificing behavior right now. His birthday party is coming up (November 1). Given my effort to encourage other-oriented behavior – along with my effort to reduce clutter, I’ll admit – I’ve proposed to Andrew that we could ask his friends to not bring presents but to, rather, consider donating money to a particular charity that is dear to Andrew’s Heart. Andrew recently visited the Loggerhead Marine Life Center in Juno Beach, FL, and he quickly indicated that he wanted this center to be the target of any such donation efforts. The Center brings in and rehabilitates various sea turtles that have been injured by the fishing or boating industries of Florida. We visit the Center regularly and Andrew loves it there. (To donate, go to marinelife.org!)

I’m thinking of this whole thing in evolutionary terms – teaching him at a young age to value outcomes that benefit the broader community and help others (turtles, in this case) while exerting a cost on himself (by not getting presents). Mind you, there are caveats – he will get presents from family members – and I have strong faith that between his birthday, Hanukkah, and Christmas, he’ll get his usual share of 500 or so presents that don’t fit in the house (slight exaggeration here!). But he is excited about the save the turtle campaign – and we’ve got to support that. When other-oriented behaviors meet positive emotions, things are good.

Shaping other-oriented orientations in kids is one of the main evolutionary hurdles faced by all humans. Religion likely can help – but if you’re a little creative and take advantage of community resources, there may even be room for secular parents to raise upstanding, dependable, and other-oriented leaders of tomorrow who care greatly about the broader global community.

Andrew, I’m proud of you! Happy Birthday my man!

References

Wilson, D. S. (2002). Darwin’s Cathedral: Evolution, Religion and the Nature of Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Wilson, D. S. (2007). Evolution for Everyone: How Darwin’s Theory Can Change the Way We Think About Our Lives. New York, NY: Delacorte Press.

Making Sense of Biology

Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution, Theodosius Dobzhansky. (1973). The American Biology Teacher, 35(3), 125-129.

 

“The great King of Kings

Hath in the tables of his law commanded

That thou shalt do no murder”

 

Shakespeare, Richard III, 1, 4.

      In this installment, I tackle a topic associated with a typically October theme, Halloween.   John Carpenter’s classic: Halloween (1978) begins with the murder of 17 year old Judith Meyers by her 6 year old younger brother Michael.  Fifteen years later Michael escapes and begins a murder spree in the small town of Haddonfield, Illinois.  In various sequels of Halloween we eventually learn that Michael Meyers is not truly human, but that his murderous desires and abilities are associated with supernatural evil.

 Myers, as a mythical figure, does not truly conform to his real world inspiration, the serial killer.  Neither does the media’s depiction of real serial killers conform to their actual behavior.  Elliot Leyton writes that the modern serial killer assumes the mantle once worn by “monsters, demons, ghouls, vampires, werewolves, and zombies¹.”  Leyton contrasts the romantic notion of fictional characters such as Dr. Hannibal Lecter, who is portrayed as intelligent, glamorous, cultivated, physically powerful, and sexually gifted with that of the reality of serial/multiple killers who are generally without intellectual and physical attainments.  Indeed what we know of psychotic killers indicates that they may be mentally incapable of developing planned killings (as portrayed by Thomas Harris in his Hannibal Lecter character.)  Zdzilaw Marchwicki, who became known as the “Vampire of Silesia” killed some 14 women in 1960’s Poland.  His victims were unknown to him and “targets of opportunity.” The lack of connection to his victims explained why he was difficult to catch.  It had nothing to do with any superior intelligence or planning.  He was eventually captured when he confessed after being brought in for a domestic violence charge².

 So what do we know about multiple or serial killers?  First, the answer to that question depends on how you define multiple or serial killer.  For example, while we may find contract murderers or state bureaucrats who engage in multiple murders reprehensible, they don’t really fall into the Michael Myers, Jack the Ripper, or Ted Bundy archetype.  The Halloween notion is of the murderer who kills for murder’s sake.  In the real world, multiple/serial killers cannot come back for sequel after sequel.  Thus their modus operandi can be distinguished between those who decide to kill many people all at once; with no hope of survival themselves (e.g. Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold) or serial murders as the Vampire of Silesia who would have kept killing women if he had never been in a position to confess.  Despite these differences in “motivation” evolutionary theory may provide us with important insights into these behaviors.

 Homicides are rare and the homicides of the sort I wish discuss are even rarer.  In 2002, the rate of homicide in the United States was 5.6 per 100,000 persons³. The vast majority of these murders are associated with social and cultural factors, e.g. crime, poverty.  However, even in these categories there is evidence of evolutionary factors at play, such as the gender disparity.  

 

Sex of Victim	Male Offender	Female Offender
Male 4,931	4,328	528
Female 1,980	1.778	183

 Thus most people murdered are male, but they are murdered mainly by other males (4328/4931 = 0.87) and of the females murdered, most of them are murdered by males (1778/1980 = 0.90.) Buss discusses this gender disparity in the light of two potential hypotheses: “the slip-up hypothesis” and the “homicide module hypothesis⁴.”  In both of these scenarios, murder is an “adaptive strategy” that might be utilized in specific circumstances.  These explanations may do more to explain more about killing in general (whether it is that which is legal or illegal) than they do to explain the serial or multiple killer.  Despite this fact, the gender disparity holds up within the confines of the serial murderer as well.

Serial killer murders probably make up no more than 1% of all murders.  A specific sort of murder that may fall into the category associated with serial killers is sexual homicide.  This is estimated at about 1% and 4% prevalence amongst all murders in the United States and Canada respectively⁵. Sexual homicides may provide us with useful information to explain serial murders in general (realizing that not all serial murderers engage in sexual homicide.)  The evidence suggests that sexual murderers often fall into the behavioral category known as psychopathy.  Psychopaths are mainly male, and show callous, manipulative, superficial, and violent interpersonal style⁶.  One study has shown that sexual homicide offenders have elevated levels of psychopathic traits relative to other offenders.  In addition, these offenders show an even greater level of violence and sadism in the commission of these crimes.  The level of sadism and violence exhibited indicates that they are deriving both sexual and general pleasure during the commission of these acts⁷.

If some serial killers are psychopaths, then how do evolutionary mechanisms explain their existence?  Also what of the serial/multiple killers that do not fall into this category?  There are several views of psychopathy.  Some suggest that the psychopath is just an extreme version of “normal” behavior.  Under this hypothesis, these individuals appear, solely by chance.  Another hypothesis is that psychopathic behavior is an adaptive strategy.  This view holds that the psychopath is engaging in an “r-selection” and cheater type strategy that will increase their reproduction, often at the expense of society at large.  Clearly by this model, the psychopathic player strategy can only be effective to increase fitness if these players remain at low frequency.  This notion suffers from a number of difficulties.  Not the least of which is that this strategy guarantees that the genes that engender it will always be rare.  Under this scenario such genes can easily be lost in populations due to genetic drift.  There is also the problem that the r- and K-selection hypothesis has been demonstrated not to be a legitimate dichotomy, especially in humans⁸. Finally, some theories suggest that psychopaths result from failures in brain modules that were selected for adaptive reasons, such as theory of mind and superconsciousness.  Theory of mind involves the ability of humans to comprehend and feel the state of mind of other humans.  This was thought to be a requirement of increased social living and complexity of modern humans.  One of the largest evidences of the existence of theory of mind was the recent discovery of mirror neurons.  These actually allow our brains to conceive of and feel the states of other persons, without actually performing the task in question ourselves⁹.  Studies have shown that in some aspects of theory of mind abilities that psychopaths underperform, while in others they are no different from non-psychopathic individuals.  It is argued that these results are not fatal to the theory of mind explanation, especially if psychopaths are capable of “understanding” the emotions of others, but not actually feeling them in a way that prevents their manipulative actions.  In other words, this ability may actually help them be even more effective as “cheaters” in society.

 My colleague, Michael Rose advances the idea that psychopaths (or sociopaths) result from a failure of another sort of brain module (superconsciousness.)  Superconsciousness when properly functioning allows individuals to calculate that costs of their behaviors relative to their individual fitness in various social circumstances.  Again, since all complex traits are influenced by genetic variation, some individuals inherit defective modules.  He suggests that since psychopathy can be produced by brain injuries or disease and that these occur in specific portions of the brain, that therefore this behavior results from poor functioning (as opposed to being an adaptive strategy¹⁰.)  This observation is also consistent with the fact that other developmental and personality disorders can produce individuals who are serial murderers (e.g. schizophrenia, as in the case of David Berkowitz, Son of Sam¹¹.)

Finally, what of the serial or multiple killers that seem to not be suffering from any diagnosable mental illness? Leyton discusses these in his Hunting Humans.  Leyton suggests that the modern American multiple killer is not suffering insanity or delusions.  The vast majority of these individuals are of European American descent and from the working or lower middle class.  They display an incredible class-consciousness and a need to punish society for their inability to move up its social ladder.  In his model, Ted Bundy murdered the very upper middle class women that he coveted, but was unable to have.  His acts were designed to wreak vengeance on that sector of society for denying him his rightful status.  However, Leyton fails to realize that the “need” that males have to achieve social status is something that is well embraced by evolutionary theory.  If indeed, our mate preferences are evolved and these preferences operate through our various behavioral mechanisms, any male that does not fall into the preferred category could potentially exhibit pathological behavior.  Indeed, this could explain why much of the violence in human societies occurs both to maintain the social hierarchy of some males over others, and by those who are subordinated to break out of their social oppression.

Indeed, while this month’s theme is the reality of the serial and multiple murderer, such individuals have little influence on the character of human society.  It is precisely their rarity that captures our attention and makes them the stuff of our nightmares.  If we really think about our social dynamics, and its impacts on life and death, we should be far more concerned about those highly functional people whose impacts on others are homicidal.  While we should be wary of the Gacy’s, Berkowitz’s, and Marchwicki’s amongst us, they will never kill as many in their careers, as our social inequalities do to the innocent each day.  Is this what our King of King’s really meant when he commanded: “Do no murder?”

Notes and References

1. Leyton, E., Hunting Humans: The Rise of the Modern Multiple Murderer, (New York, NY: Carroll and Graft Publishers), 2001.
2. Ibid, pp. 43 – 53.
3. U.S. Dept. of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Crime in the United States 2002: Uniform Crime Reports (Washington, DD: U.S. Government Printing Office.)
4. Buss, D.M., Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of Mind, (Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon), 1999.
5. Roberts, J.V. and Grossman, M.G, Sexual homicide in Canada: A descriptive analysis, Annals of Sex Research, 6: 5-25, 1993.
6. Kinner, S., Psychopathy as an adaptation: Implications for Society and Social Policy, in Bloom, R.W. and Dess, N, editors: Evolutionary Psychology and Violence: A Primer for Policymakers and Public Policy Advocates, (Westport, CN: Praeger Publishers), 2003.
7. Porter, S. et al, Characteristics of sexual homicides committed by psychopathic and nonpsychopathic offenders, Law and Human Behavior 27(5): 459-470, 2003.
8. Brune, M. and Brune-Cohrs, U, Theory of Mind—evolution, ontogeny, brain mechanisms, and psychopathology, Neuroscience and Behavioral Reviews 30: 437-455, 2006.

1. Graves, J.L., What a tangled web he weaves: Race, reproductive strategies, and Rushton’s life history theory,   Anthropological Theory,2(2): 131-154, 2002.

10.  Rose, M.R., personnel communication, 2008.

11.  Firth, C.D., The Cognitive Neuropsychology of Schizophrenia, (Hove, UK: Lawrence Erlbaum), 1992.

Women hold up half the sky…but what about the other genders?

On August 19, 2009, South African runner Caster Semenya won the woman’s 800 meters at the World Championships.  She also set the world record.  This in and of itself is not particularly interesting.  The challenge to her victory is.  Caster Semenya’s physical appearance is not stereotypically female.  This has led some to claim that she is really not a female and a formal protest has been filed.  Many South Africans are outraged at this challenge, identifying it as resulting from “white” racism.  After the race it was revealed that the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) had asked her to take a gender test three weeks before the world championships.  These tests include genetic, gynecological, endocrine, and psychological measures.  Typically when we talk about sex we are referring to something that is biological and when we discuss gender we are referring to how individuls perceive themselves and our perceived by society. Thus gender is more socially constructed than biological. This explains why all four of these tests are conducted to determine eligibility for female sports.  Caster Semenya was allowed to compete in the world championships because the IAAF had no evidence that could be used to stop her from competing.  At the time of this writing these results have not been released. 

There are a number of issues that can explain this challenge.  Some of it may be European racism, but the primary problem here is the notion that the human species contains only two genders with distinct body types and behaviors.  This is a mythological view, but one not held by all cultures.  Plato for example thought that there were three genders, male, female, and hermaphrodite.  Hermaphrodites are defined as individuals that have various mixtures of gonadal structures and secondary sexual characteristics.  The word hermaphrodite comes from the Greek gods Hermes (son of Zeus, messenger) and Aphrodite (Goddess of sexual love and beauty.) Even early Biblical scholars thought Adam was originally a hermaphrodite and that he later became male after the fall².  Clearly this notion of humanity did not survive later Biblical interpretations in which there are only supposed to be two sexes/genders and their sexual behavior is rigidly proscribed.  The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis results in part from the sexual wickedness of the inhabitants.  The word sodomy (referring to anal intercourse) derives from reference to Sodom.

Fruitfulness (in more ways than one)

One of the ways that scientific hypotheses are judged is their fruitfulness.  That is how many predictions or avenues of investigation are engendered if the hypothesis or theory is true.  Evolutionary biology is particularly fruitful in explaining sex, gender, and mating/sexual behavior and this is one of the weakest aspects of Biblical literalist special creationist ideology.  For example, evolutionary theory requires that reproduction be at the core of the biology of all organisms.  Natural selection is best defined as “differential reproductive success.”  Humans, as complicated as they may be, are not immune to this dictum. 

For example, Biblical literalist interpretations of the human birth process claim that women are cursed to deliver their young in pain because of Eve’s sin (Genesis 3:16.) The passage actually says that God would greatly increase her pain in childbearing, possibly indicating that even without this event there might have been some pain.  Evolutionary biology provides another explanation.  Human females experience more pain in childbirth compared to other closely related primates (Gorilla, Chimpanzee, and Orangutan) because of the size of their offspring’s head compared to the diameter of their pelvis bone³. The increase in human head size and the relative narrowing of the human pelvis result from the mosaic history of human evolution.  On one hand, increasing head size of offspring (and delayed brain development) and on the other upright posture and running are concomitant with the changed pelvis diameter.  These adaptations did not come without cost however, human childbirth is risky and until the age of modern medicine, childbirth was still one the largest sources of death to young women.  This had impacts on the social structure of our species.  Social networks of women may have been crucial in reducing the risk of death during childbirth⁴.

How Many Genders/Sexes?

During the writing of the Origin of Species, Darwin was particularly impressed by the sexual characteristics/behavior of barnacles.  The more he learned about them, the more he was convinced that his species theory was correct.  He was astounded to find many species in which the males had become completely dependent upon the females (and were only found attached to the female body.)  In these species the entire male anatomy was reduced to simply being a “giant penis⁵.”  If this occurrence was limited to barnacles than this observation is not particularly important; however there are many species in which parasitic males are the norm, such as the adult of the Schistosoma spp.  In this species the adult male worm spends his entire life in the gynocophoric grove of the female.  His sole function is the production of sperm.

Taking this logic further we can ask: why do males exist at all?  After all if we define female as the capacity to reproduce, then all original life was female.  This question has dominated research in evolutionary biology.  The take home lesson of this research program is that: hermaphroditic species are extremely common in nature, separate sexes evolve under specific conditions, and that individuals can change their sex under specific conditions⁶.  Given that humans evolved from animal lineages with these features, why would anyone be surprised that human gender/sex determination is both complex and fluid?

Instead of viewing human sex/gender as a dichotomy (male or female) it is more profitable to think of this as continuum from individuals who look and behave in a stereotypically female to those that behave in stereotypically male ways.  To understand this we must understand that sex/gender is influenced by events that occur at the level of genes, organs (specifically gonads and brains), and organ systems (body.)  The expression of genes is influenced by chance and environmental effects and these can have important impacts on development.  In our species, sex determination occurs via the 23^rd set of chromosomes, designated X and Y.  The Y chromosome has very few genes, but it carries testes determining factor (TDF).  Generally, individuals who are genetically XY develop testes and a penis.  However, all human embryos start out with identical structures (or are female.)  Therefore it is possible for individuals who are genetically XY to complete development in ways that produce external genitalia that are female.  Fausto-Sterling 2000 summarizes the various common ways that embryos can undergo nondimorphic sexual development.

Cause	Frequency/100 Live Births
Non-XX or Non-XY (except Turner’s or Klinefelter’s)	0.06390
Turner Syndrome	0.03690
Klinefelter Syndrome	0.09220
Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome	0.00760
Partial Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome	0.00076
Classic Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia (CAH)	0.00779
Late onset CAH	1.50000
Vaginal agenesis	0.01690
True hermaphrodites	0.00120
Idiopathic	0.00009
Total	1.72800

 

These data suggest that around 2% of live births are intersex individuals. These frequencies can differ by population due to genetic drift and it has been shown that the frequency of hermaphrodites in the indigenous S. African population is higher than the value reported in this table⁷.

When it comes to the sexual behavior aspect of gender, particularly sexual orientation, knowing the frequency of intersex individuals is not particularly informative.  This is because what we think of as gender is influenced by a complicated interaction of genetic, cellular, physiological, and organ interactions.  For example, there are a number of regions in the human brain that influence sexual orientation.  For example three areas around the hypothalamus are sexually dimorphic (SDN-POA, BSTc, and VIP-SCN. ) In non-transgendered heterosexual males, BSTc is 150% the size of (2.5 mm³ versus 1.75 mm³) and has about 33,000 neurons compared to 19,000 neurons in non-transgendered heterosexual females.  VIP-SCN size for homosexual men is bigger (1.7 times and 2.1 times the neurons) than that of heterosexual men or of heterosexual women⁸.  From this we conclude that gay male brains are different from those of straight men, but not equivalent to those of female brains in this region.   At another region surrounding the hypothalamus, INAH3; heterosexual male size = 0.1 mm³; heterosexual women and gay males = 0.05 mm³.  Consider the combination of brains that result from these 4 regions = 2⁴ power = 16; and if we consider brain and body type combinations (male/female organs and brain types) = 2⁵= 32.  Given that intersex individuals exist with ovo-testes than we could increase the number of combinations to 3 x 16 = 48. In this scenario, those we think of as “women” would be holding up less than half the sky, since 47 other genders exist (even if many of the others are less frequent than “male and female”.)

Using positron emission tomography of sexual attraction a study of 25 heterosexuals of each sex and 20 homosexual also of each sex found that cerebral and amygdale asymmetries of the homosexual group reflected those of the opposite sex in heterosexuals⁹.   This again suggests that gays may inherit brain structures that more closely resemble the opposite sex, but how this might lead to attraction towards the same sex or whether it is inevitable ‘from the womb’ or still subject to social selection remains to be established.   Thus it is premature to conclude we are born with a rigid sexual orientation.  For example, identical twins which share the same genes display opposite sexual orientation around 50% of the time when one of the twins is gay.

 Genetic contributions to gay sexual orientation

Hamer and Pattatucci 1993 found that gay men tended to cluster in families¹⁰.  This study recruited homosexual men (and their families) from HIV clinics in Washington, D.C. area.  The brother of a gay man had a 13% chance of being gay, while the brother of a heterosexual man had only about a 2% chance. This result indicates that genes are involved in determining gay sexual orientation.  Subjects rated their sexuality on the Kinsey scale (0 for exclusive heterosexuality to 6 for exclusive homosexuality.)  These ratings were revealing.  For example, only 70% of the individuals who self-described as heterosexual claimed that they never had experienced homosexual activity to orgasm.  Which means that 30% of the self-described heterosexual men admitted to having some homosexual experiences in their past.  Similarly > 40% of the men who described themselves as homosexual admitted to having heterosexual activity to orgasm.  This again underscores the complexity of human gender.

The Hamer study localized the genetic contribution in this population to five genetic loci on the tip of the X chromosome that where statistically significantly higher in gay males.   This raises an interesting evolutionary question.  How could these genes circulate at such high frequency if homosexual males have a lower reproductive output than heterosexual males?  The answer is that no gene could increase in frequency by natural selection if its net impact is to lower the reproductive output of those that carry it.  Two hypotheses have been advanced to explain the existence of genes that increase the likelihood that its carrier will be gay.   Imagine that the role of these specific genetic markers is to signal that the carrier should be attracted to men.

If the five markers are inherited together on the X chromosome, they can be symbolized as one locus = s.  This results in five phenotypes:

•XX =    “normal” woman

•X_sX =    normal woman (possibly more highly attracted to men.)

•X_sX_s= “super” woman (most highly attracted to men.)

•XY =     heterosexual man

•X_sY=     homosexual man

If we assume that only heterosexual men and heterosexual women are having children, then the predisposition to be a gay male can be produced by heterosexual males and their mating with any woman that carries the s allele.  If the women carrying the s alleles are more likely to mate than women without, that would explain the persistence of the “gay gene.”  Obviously this explanation only applies to gay maleness but not any genetic contribution to lesbianism.  There is no reason why a mechanism of this kind couldn’t be in operation.  Such genes are labeled as “sexually antagonistic.”  A second hypothesis that has been applied to how gay behavior may evolve is through the mechanism of kin-selection and multiple gender families.  Roughgarden describes this in a number of non-human species¹¹.  In short, this operates because an individual can contribute to the reproductive success of a relative, even if they do not reproduce themselves.  If multiple gender families are more successful than dual gender families, than genes contributing to this behavior would spread, even if they resulted in homosexual behavior.

Fruitfulness Explained and its consequences

Genesis 1:20 describes how God blessed the animals and exhorted them to be fruitful and multiply after their kind.  Beyond this poetic language it does not describe specific mechanisms and read literally what it claims is wrong.  Reproduction implies evolution.  For this reason, anything in an organism’s reproductive biology is a great interest to evolutionary biologists.   This is just as true in humans as in any other species.  Applying evolutionary theories to sex and gender tells us a great number of things, including how someone could have a male-looking body, female genitalia, and female gender behavior (or any other combination.)  This reality applied to the world of athletic competition means that the present gender categories need revision.  This reality applied to the world of human society as a whole means that it can no longer rationally support anti-gay bigotry.  Case in point, North Carolina has a “crimes against nature” statute.  As written it is applied mainly to oral and anal sexual acts, generally only applied to homosexuals.  This act is discriminatory and its origin is based in the mythology of dichotomous gender and sex.  It and all remaining discrimination against gay and lesbians should be struck down immediately.  It is time for rational understanding of the human condition to determine our laws.

References

1. Is she really a he? Women’s 800 meter runner shrugs off gender storm to take gold. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1207653/Womens-800m-gold-medal-favourite-Caster-Semenya-takes-gender-test-hours-World-Championship-race.html

2. Fausto-Sterling, A, Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Identity, (New York, NY: Basic Books), 2000.

 3. Shultz, A.H., Sex differences in the pelvis of primates, Am. J. Physical Anthropology 7: 401-424.

4. Trevathan, W., Evolutionary obstetrics, in Evolutionary Medicine, Trevathan, W, Smith, E.O, and McKenna, J.J, Eds, (New York, NY: Oxford University Press), 1999.

 5. Desmond, A. and Moore, J. , Darwin: Life of a Tormented Evolutionist, (New York, NY: Norton), 1994.

 6. An excellent discussion of this topic can be found in Rose, M.R. and Mueller, L.D, Evolution and Ecology of the Organism, (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall), 2006.

 7. Danso A.P, Nkrumah F.K, The challenges of ambiguous genitalia. Cent. Afr. J. Med. 38:367–371, 1992; Blackless, M, Charuvastra, A, Derryck, A, Fausto-Sterling, A, Lauzanne, K, and Lee, E, How Sexually Dimorphic Are We? Review and Synthesis, Am.  J. Human Biology 12:151–166, 2000.

 8.  Roughgarden, J, Evolution’s Rainbow: Diversity, Gender, and Sexuality in Nature and People, (Berkeley , CA: University of California Press), 2004.

 9. Savic, I and Lindstrom, P, PET and MRI show differences in cerebral asymmetry and functional connectivity between homo-and heterosexual subjects, PNAS 10.1073/pnas.0801566105Â, 2008.

10. Hamer et al., A linkage between DNA markers on the X chromosome and male sexual orientation, Science261: 321-327, 1993.

 11.  Roughgarden, J, Evolution’s Rainbow: Diversity, Gender, and Sexuality in Nature and People, (Berkeley , CA: University of California Press), 2004; see specifically chapter 6: Multiple Gender Families.