Every now and then, through life, you run into someone who just amazes you – and who typically amazes everyone else who knows that person. I don’t know about you, but I’m definitely at a point in life where the older I get, the more I realize how little I know and how much others have to offer. If you’re paying any attention, life is humbling. My respect for others deepens each day.

I have several heroes. Through graduate school at the University of New Hampshire, I got to work closely with Becky Warner. Other-oriented behavior (quietly) radiates from Becky all the time. I could not have had a more supportive and helpful mentor. Exemplary. When I moved to Oregon in 1997, I was fortunate to work in the psychology department at Western Oregon University. This was the kindest, funnest, most easygoing, capable, and supportive group I’d ever seen. Years later, this is still true. All the faculty there impressed me deeply. The person I worked most closely with was Vic Savicki. Also an understated person, Vic was capable of teaching 14 classes a year, publishing 5 or so articles a year, sailing the Puget Sound regularly, and always making time for others. With a smile.

Not surprisingly, I also have heroes in the field of evolutionary studies. I stand in awe of pretty much everything that David Sloan Wilson does – and Gordon Gallup, of course, makes Superman look like chump change. Having David and Gordon’s support has been enormous for my own development. These guys are heroes.

Over the past several years, I was extremely fortunate to work closely with Maureen O’Sullivan of the psychology department at the University of San Francisco. Just like Becky, Vic, David, and Gordon, Maureen was simply awe-inspiring in how she worked and in how she treated others. I still remember the day when she and Paul Ekman agreed to contribute a chapter to my first book (on the topic of measuring emotional intelligence). Maureen took the lead on this chapter. Two things stood out for me in working with her on this. First: Wow, she was razor-sharp! You had a question of her, and she was right back in your inbox – usually that same day – with everything you asked for – and more. And, as a plus, everything was delivered with exceptional humor. Second, Maureen and Paul’s chapter in my book turned out to be fantastic. It’s critical of the whole idea of emotional intelligence – but it’s critical in a productive manner. In academia, it’s easy to be critical. And it can be uninteresting, to be honest. Being critical while also being productive and respectful, now that’s something.

As anyone who knows Maureen will vouch for, she was fun to work with. A day with Maureen in the inbox was a good day. I remember a particularly tough week for me – in the span of a few days, I’d learned two depressing facts about my demographic group from the empirical literature. First, once a male gets past 30 (and I was 34 at the time), he tends to be rated as less physically attractive. Second, as a bonus, he also tends to score lower on standard measures of intelligence. Ouch! Looking for sympathy, I shared this news with Maureen – who quickly told me that I might be getting dumber and worse-looking, but that I had a long way to go before reaching the gutter! I needed that! I have that email printed and saved, as evidence in case I need it.

In seeking collaborators for my second edited book (on the topic of mating intelligence, co-edited with Geoffrey Miller), I immediately put Maureen near the top of the list of folks I’d ask to contribute. As luck would have it, Maureen and I had extremely parallel research trajectories. She got her PhD back in the day working with Guilford on the structure of intellect model of intelligence. Her research interests included intelligence, social intelligence, emotional intelligence, evolutionary psychology, deception-detection, and human mating. These are almost precisely my research interests! Maureen quickly agreed to be part of this new book – and she had a chapter based on data from hundreds of young adults on the topic of self and other deception in the context of mating. It turns out there’s lots of deception in the mating domain! Her chapter was fantastic – and it really played a pivotal role in getting the idea of mating intelligence cited in all sorts of media outlets.

Always fast to respond, always helpful, always kind. In a world where these qualities are all rare, Maureen was just unbelievable to work with. She and I had talked generally about future collaborations. Just the thought of future collaborations with Maureen made me happy.

And Maureen embraced evolution fully. Her work on emotion and deception-detection, largely done in collaboration with Paul Ekman, stands as some of the most important evolutionarily informed research in all of psychology. In fact, while many talk about how “new” the whole field of evolutionary psychology is, anyone paying attention knows that Paul and Maureen were doing this stuff for decades. The psychology of deception-detection was shaped by significant evolutionary forces across human phylogeny, and Maureen O’Sullivan knew more about this than did anyone in the world. Maureen was an evolutionary psychologist sine qua none. And she was the world’s leading expert on the topic of “truth wizards” – a highly appropriate topic of study for such an honest and genuine person.

The world of academia (let’s face it!) has its share of stuffiness and ego. In such a world, Maureen was a gem. Zero pretense. Zero arrogance. And a consistent and genuine kindness that made others feel good about themselves. Further, as a native New Yorker, Maureen totally had this “let’s get real” way about her. It’s sort of hard to not appreciate someone with this special constellation of traits.

On May 10 of this year, any possible future collaborations with Maureen came to a halt – as the world lost her to cancer. Maureen was an exemplary teacher, scholar, psychologist, and evolutionist. But more importantly, she was an exemplary person. And she will be missed sorely.

I end with a phrase that doesn’t seep into the evolutionist lexicon very frequently: God Bless you Maureen O’Sullivan.

OK – if Darwin really had lessons for today’s college graduates, he’d probably have a lot to say. In coming up with the most thorough, thoughtful, and data-filled work ever completed on questions regarding the nature of life, Darwin did, in fact, come up with a set of ideas that bear on every single aspect of what it means to be human (or cat, or dog, or robin, or goldfish, or moth, or field mouse). Other intellectual approaches that try to address broad ranges of phenomena using some set of principles tend to come up relatively short.

Consider how a Darwinian approach can benefit the area of applied psychology:

Imagine, for a moment, a mental health client who’s a young adult male complaining of social problems, general frustration, and anxiety in social contexts.

A traditionally trained mental health counseling approach might, for instance, pertain to how a client’s frustrations, recent confrontational history, and social problems need to be understood in a specific family context. The client’s familial relationship history would likely be recorded and analyzed with an eye toward helping this client. Taking the cultural norms of that family into account is broad and such an approach has the capacity to help a lot of people with diverse situations. However, I must say that, devoid of evolutionary principles, this theory is a bit narrow.

Evolutionary mental health counseling would go a step farther – perhaps a great leap further. Evolutionary mental health counseling focuses on how some behavioral problem would have functioned under ancestral conditions – with a goal of possibly seeing if said behavioral problem would have had the effect of increasing reproductive success under ancestral conditions.

Such an analysis differs from the prior in that it is rooted in Darwinism. Thus, it thinks about problems in terms of Darwinian questions, to help understand (a) why the behavioral pattern evolved under ancestral conditions, (b) what factors in the situation encourage such behavior – and, perhaps, (c) what factors mobilize actions in a way that they would increase reproductive success.

An EP counselor, looking at this situation, sees things very differently from a traditionally trained counselor. The client is a single man of reproductive age – and is, at 20-some years, a prime candidate for young male syndrome (Daly & Wilson, 1983) – a time in the life of every man when he’s willing to take particularly high risks to unconsciously gain access to mates. Confrontational, risky behavior is typical from individuals in this demographic – and its ultimate goal is to try to attract mates – just as efforts among adult male caribou during mating season are designed to defeat competitors and gain access to females. The counselor works, thus, to help the client develop non-dangerous skills that are attractive to others and that help build social connections.

These two explanations for the client’s frustration and aggressive outbursts are not particularly incongruous. To some extent, they explain the behavior at different levels, with the non-EP version focusing on proximate causes (such as the immediate familial context) and the EP version focusing on distal, ultimate causes, such as how the pattern may bear on reproductive success.

Given the unmatched power of Evolutionary Theory as a tool in unlocking the mysteries of the world, it makes exquisite sense to apply evolutionary theory to academic fields with stated goals of helping others (Keller & Nesse, 2006). To the extent that the goal (helping others) is important and valued and that the evolutionary explanation opens new insights into how to move toward the goal – including implications of specific actions that can be taken, the evolutionary approach has merit.

Thus, Darwin’s lesson to the graduates is this: Don’t be afraid to apply a new way of thinking to an old problem – even if people in the field are saying “oh no, that’s not needed – really – no – really – I mean it!” In a chapter on the power of evolution, Wilson (2007) talks about “teaching the experts” – essentially arguing that students with a strong background in EvoS have cognitive skills used to make important contributions in all kinds of fields – simply because evolution often provides a new and profoundly useful way of thinking about problems. When Daly and Wilson (1988) decided to examine differential filicide rates as a function of status as a step versus biological parent, the data sorted themselves out – nearly diving like lemmings into the appropriate and predicted statistical cells. Evolutionary theory was brought in to address this issue – and the light was turned on in the room as a result.

Graduate, you’ve learned many new skills during your time in college. You’ve learned different perspectives – and you’ve learned that these perspectives don’t always go well with one another (e.g., Geher & Gambacorta, 2010). That’s fine – and I’m glad you saw that in your education. But each perspective you learned about gave you a toolbox. A unique set of ways of thinking about some set of phenomena.

Using evolutionary psychology to understand counseling psychology makes so much sense to me as I’m in a department with a strong counseling program and I’m personally very focused on EP. So I’ve recently become intrigued by applied evolutionary psychology and am currently doing a bunch of scholarship to progress the work of this field.

But I’m not that special. You can do the same. Learn about the principles of evolutionary theory. For instance, think how these ideas may help us understanding democracy – understanding how people vote and for whom they vote. Understand what kind of issues people take on. Understand what kinds of things lead to moral outrage – and why? And what is the function of moral outrage? And how common is it? And what triggers it? And what function does this behavioral pattern serve – either for individuals or, perhaps, for the broader group? This is, of course, just a sample of questions that follow from thinking like an evolutionist. Once you learn to think like an evolutionist, the number of questions to ask is endless!

I’m focusing on how evolutionary principles can help us yield new insights into different areas of inquiry – but you can progress along a different path – other intellectual paths surely have merit. How can social constructionism help explain the pieces of your world? How can hypothesis testing, learned in boring-old-stats class, help you understand the behavior of people at a small bar on a Saturday night?

How can learning about the history of the social sciences help you predict what your future might look like 10 years from now?

Thus, this post isn’t really about how Darwinism can help you better understand the world (not fully, anyway) – it’s, rather, about how the many wonderful (and even less-than-wonderful) sets of ideas you’ve been exposed to during your tenure as a student can help you understand the world beyond how you might imagine.

Darwin’s lessons to the graduates are, thus, in my mind, considerably beyond the lessons of evolution. Here is a sample of Darwin’s lessons:
1. Keep an open mind – Darwin did – and he changed the world forever as a result.
2. Collect data – don’t accept premises that have no substance behind them.
3. Realize that all the sciences and humanities are strongly interconnected.
4. A set of ideas originally designed to explain X, may well provide an exceptional explanation of Y and Z.
5. If you like intellectual approach Q, and see its predictive merit, don’t be afraid to apply Q in new domains – you may stumble upon something that no one ever dreamed of.
6. Finally, a specific implication of Darwinism for college graduates is this: Hear that robin singing in the morning? Smell the white blossoms on the natural rose bushes near the woods? See the turkey vultures soaring high – in communicative harmony with one another? Note this: The same forces accounting for these examples account for everything you see when you look in a mirror. You are part of this magnificent natural world. This insight is, for my money, what makes Darwinism a truly spiritual approach to the world. “There is grandeur in this view of life” (Darwin, 1859).

Congratulations graduates. Along with my professorial brethren, I wish you the very best in your future. Make us proud. And remember, your success is our success.

And for more information about the exciting new field of “Applied Evolutionary Psychology,” check out the Applied Evolutionary Psychology Society (AEPS – yes, from APES to AEPS)!

References:

Darwin, C (1859). On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life (1st ed.). London: John Murray.

Geher, G., & Gambacorta, D. (2010). Evolution is not relevant to sex differences in humans because I want it that way! Evidence for the politicization of human evolutionary psychology. EvoS Journal: The Journal of the Evolutionary Studies Consortium, 2, 32-47.

Keller, M. C., & Nesse, R. M. (2006). The evolutionary significance of depressive symptoms:
Different life events lead to different depressive symptom patterns. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 91, 316-330.

Wilson, D. S. (2007). Evolution for Everyone. New York: Delacorte Press.

Wilson M, Daly M (1993) Lethal confrontational violence among young men. Pp. 84-106 in NJ Bell & RW Bell, eds., Adolescent risk taking. Newbury Park CA: Sage Press.

Wilson M, Daly M (1998) Sexual rivalry and sexual conflict: recurring themes in fatal conflicts. Theoretical Criminology. 2: 291-310.

Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, and the Importance of Adaptation Implementation in Evolutionary Psychology

I’m not going to lie. If you follow my work at all, hopefully this isn’t a surprise – I try to stay honest – it’s a way to compensate for my deficits. Lots of folks I know – several of whom I consider good friends – report that they just can’t stand evolutionary psychology. Some seem to think it’s the devil – morally and scientifically irresponsible and reprehensible. I do my best to deal with things, but every now and then, honestly, I just shake my head. And sometimes I just have to write about it.

A few weeks ago, a really interesting discussion about the mating-relevant differences between Luke Skywalker and Han Solo emerged in my graduate course in social psychology. This was one of these moments when a thread of the fabric of American culture and the content of the course interfaced perfectly.

Luke is prototyipically non-masculine – whiny and wimpy throughout three episodes. Han is just macho. He plays it cool, doesn’t need anyone’s help, and has classic masculine good looks.

What’s attractive about Luke? What’s attractive about Han? The conversation touched on several themes relevant to evolutionary psychology – mate choice, optimal features of long-term mates, optimal features of short-term mates, morphological features of sexually attractive males, the handicap principle applied to high levels of testosterone, inbreeding depression, and so forth. It was an exciting class discussion that put a face to many of the concepts from the readings of the week.

About a week later, I had a passing conversation with a long-time academic friend – who’s, notably, not a huge fan of evolutionary psychology. Somehow, I briefly mention this great class discussion – and my friend sort of scoffs – saying something like “can’t it be just that Han Solo would be way better in bed? It’s not like I’d want to have babies with him!”

I’ve learned to not bother arguing about evolutionary psychology in certain circles – but my mind immediately went to a conversation I’d had with David Schmitt when he visited New Paltz last year (to give a talk about mating psychology on Darwin’s 200th birthday). David is, of course, a leading thinker and researcher in the field – and the only thing as substantial as the academic rigor of his work is his reasonable take on things. An expert on the nature of psychological adaptations (see Schmitt & Pilcher, 2004), David introduced me to the distinction between “adaptation implementers” and “fitness optimizers” (a conception that he attributed to his mentor David Buss, a luminary in the field).

If we think of organisms as designed by evolutionary forces to propagate their own genes (Dawkins, 1976), we can have two general ways of understanding organisms. Perhaps (a) organisms are “fitness optimizers,” designed to consciously do whatever it takes to successfully produce viable progeny. On the other hand, perhaps organisms are “adaptation implementers,” designed with a battery of specific adaptations that, on average, had the effect of increasing the reproductive success of the organism’s ancestors compared with conspecifics without said adaptations.

OK – so let’s put a face to all this. Think about pregnancy sickness, famously studied by Margie Profet (1992). If pregnancy sickness is conceptualized from a fitness-optimization perspective, then pregnant women are essentially framed as conscious of the deleterious effects of certain foods on their babies, and they make themselves sick to certain stimuli as a result. If women with pregnancy sickness are, instead, framed as “adaptations implementers,” then the fact that they tend to get sick in certain contexts (e.g., when eating certain foods that are likely to possess toxins) is the result of this psychological and physiological tendency (that we call pregnancy sickness) to have increased the fitness of ancestral women – regardless of conscious thought surrounding the reproductive benefits of pregnancy sickness.

As Dave put it to me, evolutionary psychology sees humans as “adaptation implementers” – not “fitness optimizers.”

This important construct can be applied, really, to any adaptation. Think about fear of heights – one of the most basic and culturally universal fears. On one hand, we can think of this fear in terms of “conscious fitness optimization” – with people thinking “I know that if I fall 100 feet, that’s it for me – and my entire genetic lineage – ouch!” OR we can think of expressed fear of heights as explicating “adaptation implementation.” In this way, we can think of a natural fear of heights as the product nature selecting for ancestors across generations who happened to, by chance – and likely unconsciously – fear heights. In this way, someone expressing a fear of heights is simply implementing an adaptation that, on average, across generations, gave the ancestors of people with a fear of heights a reproductive advantage over others.

This same line of reasoning makes it so that modern-day contraception is not a deal killer for evolutionary psychology. I’ve heard people argue essentially that “well if evolutionary psychology says we do everything to propagate our genes, but we use contraception and many of us CHOOSE to not have kids, doesn’t that just say that evolutionary psychology is all wrong?” No. Actually. It doesn’t. Such an argument does, however, suggest that the conscious fitness-optimization approach to evolutionary psychology is completely misguided. If we were designed to consciously maximize fitness regardless of any other factors, then maybe contraception would not be as prevalent as it is – and maybe more people would choose to have children. But, in fact, people who use contraception (and there are lots of us out there) are still products of evolution whose psychologies are filled with adaptations. Contraception users still fear heights, spiders, and snakes more than other stimuli. Contraception users still show nepotistic tendencies when considering whom to help in emergency situations. They still get angry at being cheated by others in their close social circles. Contraception users experience the basic emotions of joy, sadness, surprise, disgust, and anger – and contraception users can identify these emotional states accurately in humans from across the globe. And they still find spoiled milk totally gross. Contraception users are attracted to the same features in mates that non-contraception users are attracted to – they still prefer that a mate be kind, intelligent, witty, and attractive. And, back on task, female contraception users still find Han Solo more sexually attractive than Luke Skywalker. That is, they implement psychological adaptations – regardless of conscious efforts to reduce the likelihood of reproducing. And this is exactly what we would expect in organisms that are designed to implement a battery of fitness-increasing adaptations – as opposed to organisms with general-purpose mechanisms designed to consciously increase reproductive success regardless of environmental conditions.

Being a person who uses contraception and chooses to not have children does NOT make that individual a person whose behavior and psychology are unrelated to the evolutionary history of homo sapiens

Back to the Order of the Jedi: Think about the sexual attraction that a heterosexual woman may feel toward Han over Luke. I haven’t done a poll, but suppose we find evidence that more heterosexual women find Han sexually attractive than Luke – thus, corresponding to a non-random mate-choice situation. Is it accurate and comprehensive to just say that Han would probably be better in bed? I don’t think so! I think that such a response actually screams for a distinction between fitness optimization and adaptation implementation!

In the domain of short-term mating, there are reasons underlying why women are attracted to masculine-looking men – with muscular bodies, high shoulder-to-hip ratios, deep voices, and symmetrical faces (Shoup & Gallup, 2008). And an evolutionary perspective on why women are attracted to such Han Soloesque features does not need to presume that women want to have Han’s baby! When we think of adaptation implementation, this way of thinking, in fact, can be greatly elucidated. It’s not enough to say that a woman would rather sleep with Han than Luke, and that’s just that. Science is about addressing WHY – why would such a pattern typify short-term desires of most heterosexual women? From the adaptation implementation perspective, the answer is steeped in our past. Women with such desires in short-term mates were more likely to leave viable offspring in the future. Mating with such “cads” likely led ancestral women who utilized short-term mating strategies to bear healthy, fit, and attractive offspring who were effective at fending off parasites (Gangestad & Buss, 1993).

So, in short, my friend who made this comment about being more attracted to Han than to Luke was completely right – it doesn’t have to be about consciously wanting to have Han’s baby over Luke’s. From an adaptation-implementation perspective, the ultimate causes of differential attractiveness toward one potential mate over another need not have any bearing on consciously trying to reproduce whatsoever. Just as fear of heights can exist without one consciously thinking about how falling a long way will lead to sudden death. Even if you don’t think that, being on the edge of a cliff in the mountains is still scary! And that’s because such fears gave our ancestors survival and reproductive benefits over others. Similarly, being sexually attracted to a potential mate may not make one think about the fitness-relevant end-product (e.g., shared offspring) – it may simply put one in a state (a hot state!) that is likely to lead to increased likelihood of mating.

And to top it off, remember, Han might be more masculine, but Luke can use the force!

References

Dawkins, R. (1976). The selfish gene. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Gangestad, S. W., and Buss, D. M. (1993). Pathogen prevalence and human mate preferences. Ethology and Sociobiology, 14, 89-96.

Profet, Margie (1992). “Pregnancy Sickness as Adaptation: A Deterrent to Maternal Ingestion of Teratogens”. The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture. Oxford University Press. pp. 327–365.

Schmitt, D. P., & Pilcher, J. J. (2004). Evaluating evidence of psychological adaptation: How do we know one when we see one? Psychological Science, 15, 643-649.

Shoup, M. L. & Gallup, G. G., Jr. (2008). Men’s faces convey information about their bodies and their behavior: What you see is what you get.
Evolutionary Psychology, 6, 469-479.

NOTE: This posting is the President’s Welcome for the 2010 meeting of NEEPS.

Welcome Back to New Paltz – NEEPS 2010!

Good news – we’re back! Four years ago, NEEPS was born at SUNY New Paltz. This fledgling society started as a hair-brained scheme that was plotted in 2006 by me along with several others who dared to dream big. At that point, I was certain that there was no area of psychology that rivaled Evolutionary Psychology in terms of its potential for uncovering our nature. And the resistance to EP that seems to spring up in all kinds of places seemed all the more reason to take steps to ensure the success of this awesome intellectual beast. In 2010, I’m as certain as ever of EP’s importance in academia and beyond.

Luckily, I’m not alone – and NEEPS has made this point abundantly clear. While the powerful nature of EP is certainly a pillar of the success of NEEPS, EP is only a slice of the story. What really makes NEEPS special is the NEEPS community. NEEPSters make up a particularly supportive, effective, and well-functioning group. Products of the NEEPS community include our highly successful conferences, our world-class invited speakers, our selective peer-reviewed journal (JSEC), as well as such extra-curriculars as Darwinian charades, whiffleball, poker, and the beach at Lake Ontario. NEEPSters work hard, play hard, and look out for one another.

I’m thrilled to say that NEEPS continues on its upward trajectory. Submissions for this year’s conference were record-breaking – with some 70 total submissions. This year’s NEEPSters come from 11 different states – California, Georgia, Florida, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, and Pennsylvania – and 5 different countries – Austria, Canada, England, Germany, and the United States. And this year’s keynote speakers, Richard Wrangham and Marlene Zuk, allow us to continue to elicit reactions such as “How in the world did you get her?” and “How in the world did you get him?”

Topics covered at this year’s conference represent the dauntingly broad scope of modern-day EP, including sexual selection, emotion, resource-allocation, competition, skeletal morphology, literature, irony, abnormal psychology, evolutionary clinical psychology, and the nature of the self. And lots more. Special features of this year’s conference will include a session on the international Evolutionary Studies (EvoS) consortium, our first-ever kickball tournament, and the first-annual meeting of our sister society: FEPS – the Feminist Evolutionary Psychology Society.

So that’s the happy news. Here’s the sad news: I write near the end of my third year of a three-year term as president of NEEPS. Starting in June, I’ll officially be “past-president of NEEPS.” Doesn’t quite have the same ring! Our election of this past fall, implemented skillfully by the one-and-only Jay Landolfi, was perhaps NEEPS’ biggest hurdle. Thirteen positions needed to be filled. I was nervous. What if no one stepped up? Who will be the next NEEPS president? What will come of my most precious intellectual offspring?

Well, it turns out there was nothing to worry about at all! Not only is each slot staffed – but the incoming NEEPS officers represent the best of the best. And with Rose at the helm, I can retire knowing full well that the future of NEEPS is bright like the mid-day sun.

On behalf of our local hosts (Alice Andrews, Kim Belmonte, Mike Camargo, Rachael Carmen, Haley Dillon, Ben Crosier, Nicole Giordano, Laura Johnsen, Abbey Kurtz, Heather Mangione, Kyle Titus, and myself), this year’s never-miss-a-beat program chair (Maryanne Fisher), and NEEPS vice president Rosemarie Sokol Chang, welcome to New Paltz!

Genuinely,
Glenn Geher, NEEPS President

NOTE: This meeting is scheduled for March 25-28, 2010. Be there!

For Homo Sapiens like you and me, family extends beyond kin lines. In fact, while our tendency to create psychological ingroups sometimes has adverse consequences (no doubt), the extraordinary success of our kind owes a great debt to our tendency to include non-kin as family.

Extended family members – including in-laws – comprise a core part of someone’s support system. As folks like David Buss (2003) have said before, mate choice includes more than choice of a mate – choosing a marriage partner is inextricably linked to choosing extended family members who can help support you and who can ultimately (if things go right) provide significant benefits to you, your offspring, and, ultimately, the offspring of your offspring – and beyond. Without question, I have been extremely fortunate in the in-law lottery – and, without question, my kids could not be luckier.

In-laws are more than just mother-in-law (Gill) and father-in-law (Bob). My wife Kathy’s sister Kelly and her nuclear family are fantastic – and having them in our life is an unequivocal plus – my daughter Megan and son Andrew undoubtedly would agree with this.

But we lost a member of our family today – and I’m deeply saddened. We all are. Kathy’s grandmother (and Megan and Andrew’s great-grandmother) – Gran – passed away today. As Keller and Nesse (2006) pointed out, the death of a family member leads people to seek out other family members to stay connected – perhaps to underscore the family support mechanism that still exists. In this family, writing is a way to stay connected – Megan just wrote a beautiful list of things she remembers from Gran – and Andrew drew a very sweet picture. Like most people I know, I’m not very good at dealing with death, so I guess writing a blog is my way of dealing.

Gran was a genuinely amazing person, in a very understated way, and we were so lucky to have her – and so lucky that she lived for so long. My family didn’t do the Christmas thing growing up, but Kathy’s family did – (a pretty secular version, I must add). So I get to be part of this great family tradition. Gran was from Wales – and she lived in Liverpool for a time before coming to the US (on the Queen Elizabeth I, no less). She really had a wonderful British way about her – and Christmas with Kathy’s family is filled with this influence.

Before Christmas dinner, we do the “Christmas Crackers” thing – if you haven’t ever done this, you really should. It’s pretty ridiculous. The “crackers” are sort of special packages that get opened at the start of Christmas dinner. When opened concurrently, they all make a nice “crack” (thanks to a very small amount of some sort of explosive). Included in the crackers are these totally cheesy jokes and prizes (e.g., a fake nail that looks like it went through your finger or small rings that you try to take apart (even though it’s impossible to take them apart – as far as I can ever tell)). And there’s this weird paper hat as well. Every hat comes in a different color – and the rule is you HAVE to wear it. At least through dinner – and preferably longer.

Well it turned out each year that Gran, my brother-in-law Marshall (also not of the “Christmas” background), Gill, and I were the Christmas Cracker champs – we’d wear these things up until midnight some years.

And there were the minced meat pies that we’d eat on Christmas Eve each year. Gran absolutely insisted that we eat these – and my mother-in-law Gill, a dutiful daughter, always complied. Each Christmas Eve, she’d pull the pies out of the oven at 9pm – like clockwork. Gran, Marshall, and I would, along with Gill, eat these “yummy” pies without fail (with sherry, a true British tradition). No one else dares!

Gran was an understated person – nothing fancy. Simple, smart, and funny – right up to the end. She could always hear everything – and she pretty much always had a comment. Around Christmas, there was always lots of “isn’t that lovely,” evenly peppered with dry comments such as “well that wouldn’t make much sense, now would it?”

Last year, we hosted Gran’s 95th birthday party – and it was great. My favorite moment was when she opened an expensive bottle of liquor that my uncle had bought for her. “Well once you open it, you have to let me try some,” Uncle Saul said jokingly. “Absolutely not!” retorted Gran, in the driest tone possible. No one doubted her for a second!

Christmas without Gran doesn’t seem possible, to be honest. But we’ll make do. And we’ll keep the traditions – silly as they are – alive and well, in her honor. We’ve been so fortunate to have her in our lives for so long. From an evolutionary perspective, having such a special family member through marriage is nothing short of a blessing.

References

Buss, D. M. (2003). The evolution of desire. New York: Basic Books.

Keller, M. C., & Nesse, R. (2006). The evolutionary significance of depressive symptoms: Different adverse situations lead to different depressive symptom patterns. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 91, 316-330.

There are buzz words in academia – and if you’ve been around long enough, you’ve grown tired of many of them. “Collaborative Research” – “Student Focused Learning” – “Experiential Learning” – and, among them, “Interdisciplinarity.” OK, I’ll admit, I really love most of these things – even if they may be cliches. But in the past few years, I’ve become hugely impressed with the pedagogical benefits of interdisciplinarity in particular.

In a (hopefully) forthcoming article* titled “The Interdisciplnary Context of Evolutionary Psychology: A Key to Survival in the Ivory Archipelago,” Justin Garcia, Ben Crosier, Gad Saad, Dan Gambacorta, Laura Johnsen, Elissa Pranckitas, and I explored (a) just how interdisciplinary evolutionary psychology (EP) is relative to other fields in the discipline, and (b) the issue of positive effects of interdisciplinary scholarship. In a nutshell, by systematically content coding the departmental affiliations of authors of major journals in EP along with several other important perspective-based areas of psych (e.g., cognitive neuroscience and the psychodynamic perspective), we were able to document that EP journals (specifically, Evolution and Human Behavior along with Evolutionary Psychology) were much more likely to include first authors from outside psychology departments, including scholars as first authors from such diverse academic disciplines as biology, anthropology, philosophy, and literature, among others. Further, the total number of non-psychology disciplines ran deeper for the EP journals, including a broader assortment of academic fields.

So in that article, we argue that EP’s interdisciplinary nature has, in fact, come of age – and that fostering this interdisciplinary identity will help the field connect with academic areas in the broadest sense, allowing its seeds to disseminate widely. In a world that is hostile to evolutionary psychology (See Geher, 2006), anything that can effectively disseminate EP should be taken seriously. Interdisciplinary scholarship is the kind of thing needed to facilitate this process.

Sometimes, my teaching and my scholarship match perfectly – and such an instance is upon me now. I’m glad to say that, for the third straight year in a row, I’ll be teaching a section of Evolutionary Studies Seminar as part of our school’s Evolutionary Studies Seminar Series. This speaker series, currently funded by the NSF and hosting such biggies as Niles Eldredge, Richard Wrangham, and Marlene Zuk, is the centerpiece of the work I do at New Paltz. It’s the centerpiece of the EvoS program – and it’s exactly what gets people so excited about the program.

Each year, the interest in the program increases – this year, we’re offering 4 sections of this course – each of which seems to be filling up without a problem during pre-registration. There will be a lot of students taking this course in spring – and we’re lucky to have such stellar instructors, Alice Andrews, Alex Bartholomew, and Mike Camargo, teach sections concurrent with my own.

During many course meetings, all the sections get together – along with others in the community, and we attend free lectures given by our speakers. We then continue the conversation with the speakers at a pizza reception. It’s the kind of education that immediately goes well beyond the textbook (in many cases, it’s “that person who WROTE the textbook”) and goes way beyond typical undergraduate education. This simply is the most dynamic and intrinsically motivated class that’s, in my opinion, offered at our fine school.

And interdsiciplinarity raises its head more than once regarding this class. First, consider the various academic fields represented by our speakers: http://www.newpaltz.edu/evos/seminar.html

We have geologists, anthropologists, biologists, and psychologists – spanning topics as disparate as epi-genetics to Darwin’s insights about botanical adaptations to the origins of sexual reproduction in garlic. The series is beautiful – and it tells the story of Darwin’s ideas applied across various academic disciplines remarkably well. The EvoS Seminar Series has the capacity to build those needed bridges across the islands of the academic archipelago.

In looking at my roster for next semester, I’m excited to say that EvoS is hitting us with another blast of interdisciplinarity. This time, it comes from the students. When I first started teaching this course in Fall 2007, my students were mostly psychology or biology majors with a few anthropology majors thrown in for some fun and giggles. No more. EvoS is truly taking on the interdiscinplinary form it was meant to take. My current roster of 20 includes students from the following majors:

Cell Biology
Theatre Arts
Undeclared
Psychology
Childhood Education
Psychobiology
Philosophy
Adolescent Education: Social Studies
Organismic Biology
Computer Science
Anthropology

Diversity of the majors of students interested in EvoS strikes me as a great marker of interdisciplinarity.

Note that this class is not a lower level general education course – it’s an upper level course that fills no general education requirement, other than the “writing intensive” requirement, which is met by courses within most majors.

Then who are these students – and what do they want? If It’s anything like last year, I think I have a good sense. About half these students are likely already enrolled in the EvoS minor on campus. These tend to be bright, hard-working students who care about learning more than about things like grades or future job prospects. These are the intrinsically motivated students who are on a journey for self-knowledge – and with its focus on human affairs, self-knowledge comes to all EvoS students in many different ways. The other students are just downright interested – interested in evolution – interested in who people are – interested in what life is – and interested in why things are the way they are. I’ve never had a class bring out such genuine learning desires on the part of college students – there’s something special to this course.

And the fact that students represent all these different academic fields is HUGE. Learning increases as a result. As the instructor of the course, I learn so much by being surrounded by these bright young and motivated students. When anthropology students chime in on a topic about a particular tool used by a particular hominid – or when a biology student chimes in with a comment about new molecular dating technique to provide an index of phylogenetic overlap between species, etc., I LEARN! I learn just as much from the students in this class each year as I do from the world-renowned speakers we bring in.

Along with our respected speakers (http://www.newpaltz.edu/evos/seminar.html), a great group of collegial faculty, a supportive administration, and students that impress the heck out of me every time I turn around, I think I’m ready for the 2010 EvoS Seminar Series course – bring it on!

References

*manuscript still under review

Geher, G. (2006). Evolutionary psychology is not evil! … and here’s why … Psihologijske Teme (Psychological Topics); Special Issue on Evolutionary Psychology, 15, 181-202.

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.

Kramare and Treichler (1996): “Feminism is the radical notion that women are people.”

Geher (2009): “Evolutionary psychology is the radical notion that human behavior is part of the natural world.”

There is no reason on earth to believe that these two “radical” notions are irreconcilable.

I am glad to say that an important and growing intellectual movement is in the works. The Feminist Evolutionary Psychology Society (FEPS) was borne of discussions at the most recent meeting of the NorthEastern Evolutionary Psychology Society (NEEPS) in Oswego, New York. Apparently, the NEEPS meetings are about more than intensive academic sessions, world-class keynote speakers, whiffle ball, and parties on the beach.

Believe it or not, most evolutionary psychologists I know are exceptionally “progressive” in their politics. I quote the word “progressive,” as I feel bad for folks who are not considered “progressive” by those who are self-proclaimed in their “progressivity” – seems like kind of a bad thing to be “non-progressive.” In fact, “non-progressive” almost sounds fully synonymous with “stupid.” But I digress.

“Progressive” means more than “secular democrat” or “liberal.” The moniker has a clear connotation regarding action. Those who consider themselves “progressive,” as far as I can tell, proactively work to uphold various important social values. Someone who is “progressive” not only is against racism, sexism, and unjust wars that kill thousands – he or she also has a sense of obligation to shape the world to be less racist, sexist, and unjust.

Evolutionary psychology has proven to be extremely controversial – often, as I’ve stated in prior work (Geher, 2006), perceived as some sort of conservative conspiracy designed to keep the gender-based status quo. This portrait of evolutionary psychology is inherently “non-progressive.”

In fact, evolutionary psychology is, at its core, an approach to understanding human behavior using evolutionary theory – arguably the single-most influential theory that has existed in the history of science – as a guide. The idea of understanding human behavior in light of evolutionary forces is not inherently conservative, sexist, or evil – not even close. Trying to understand who we are by employing the most powerful theory that exists within the life sciences actually seems pretty smart when you think about it.

A recent examination of the political attitudes of psychologists who label themselves as “evolutionary psychologists” versus other psychologists tells an interesting story. In an article published in Human Nature in 2007, Josh Tybur, Geoffrey Miller, and Steve Gangestad reported that evolutionary psychologists are every bit as left-leaning and “progressive” as non-evolutionary psychologists – being just as likely to affiliate with the democratic party – and being no more likely to have voted for George W. Bush in the 2004 presidential election. While folks from the conservative right are likely not at all surprised by these data (after all, isn’t that whole theory of evolution an anti-religious New York liberal thing?), I bet “progressive” folks on the far left may well be.

As David Sloan Wilson (2009) tells us, evolutionary psychologists need to reclaim our field. The term “evolutionary psychology” has often been yoked with very specific approaches to human behavior – and has partly become embroiled in politics as a result. While I don’t think any of these approaches is inherently sexist, it will definitely serve future scholars well to take a more open approach to understanding how evolution underlies human behavior. According to David – with whom I agree strongly on this issue – evolutionary psychologists would benefit from being open to non-modularist approaches that take seriously the fact of cultural evolution.

When Rosemarie Chang, EvoS websmaster, came to me during the NEEPS conference to ask if I’d be up for joining a new organization called FEPS, I was immediately on board. So were many attendees at NEEPS 09. It turns out that evolutionary psychologists are not only typically liberal and feminist in their politics – they’re also “progressive” – and the birth of FEPS demonstrates this point strongly.

What will come of FEPS? I’m not sure. But given the intellectual strength of folks who are primarily responsible for forming this new society – including Alice Andrews, Rebecca Burch, Rosemarie Chang, Maryanne Fisher, Leslie Heywood, Dan Kruger, Kaja Perina, Sarah Strout, and many others – I have little doubt that great things are to follow.

Can insights from evolutionary psychology help reduce unfair sexist policies and actions? Can insights from evolutionary psychology help lead to a world that empowers people regardless of gender? Can my field of evolutionary psychology make my daughter Megan’s world a better and brighter place? You know what I think.

The first official meeting of FEPS will take place as something of a pre-conference to the 2010 meeting of NEEPS – slated to likely take place where NEEPS was born in 2007 – my home campus at SUNY New Paltz. Check the NEEPS website (neepsociety.com) for details. Hope to see you there.

Oh – and here’s the URL for the FEPS facebook group – tell your friends:

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=122502515165*

References

Geher, G. (2006). Evolutionary psychology is not evil! … and here’s why … Psihologijske Teme (Psychological Topics); Special Issue on Evolutionary Psychology, 15, 181-202.

Kramare, C., & Treichler, P. A. (1996).  A Feminist Dictionary. Illinois: University of Illinois Press.

Tybur, J. M., Miller, G. F., & Gangestad, S. W. (2007). Testing the controversy: An empirical examination of adaptationists’ attitudes towards politics and science. Human Nature, 18, 313-328.

Wilson, D. (2009). Evolutionary psychology and the public media: Rekindling the romance. Huffington Post Blogs.

* must be approved by the group administrator, Rosemarie Chang, to join. Contact Rosemarie at: evostudies@gmail.com

I type on a plane that just left Los Angeles – bound for the East Coast – where I will need to switch from my HBES (Human Behavior and Evolution Society) identity to my identity as husband, dad, dog owner, New Paltz faculty member, vice president of the Friends of the Plattekill Public Library, etc. Back to the real world.

HBES is decidedly not the real world. And I mean that in a good way. HBES is something of a Mecca for evolutionists – and this year’s meeting in LA – my fourth HBES meeting – was as great as ever. Surrounded by such luminaries in the field as David Buss, Steve Gangestad, Pete Richerson, and, of course, the driving force behind the EvoS movement, David Sloan Wilson, attending this conference is sort of like being immersed in the Major League All-Star game – and even being allowed to swing the bat a few times. Being surrounded by so many important minds – each with an understanding of the shared principles that comprise evolutionary theory – is simply awesome.

This year, we were fortunate to have an HBES symposium dedicated to the single most important idea that I’ve come across in higher education: EvoS. I’ve done a good bit in my career – and am pleased with many of the courses I teach, papers and books I’ve published, students I’ve sent into the real world with their own wings, etc. – but it is without question that starting the EvoS program at New Paltz is, in my mind, the singular most important accomplishment of my career. I was totally honored to be part of the EvoS symposium at HBES – along with such academic rock stars as Rosemarie Chang, Dan O’Brien, and David Sloan Wilson. In this blog, I hope to continue where our symposium left off, elaborating on the pedagogical excitement that is unique to EvoS.

Before the advent of EvoS-New Paltz, as a member of a psychology department teaching evolutionary psychology, I just felt that my passion for teaching this stuff was stifled – and that was disappointing. While students would just line up to take the class – fill all the seats within hours of pre-registration – and rave about its impact on their thinking afterward – my position as the sole evolutionary psychologist on campus sort of made my evolutionary psychology course a curricular dead-end. They would take it, tell me how much they loved it, ask why it was “only an elective” in the psychology major (don’t ask – long and unpleasant story on that!), and ask and ask and ask for more related courses.

The second I heard about David Wilson’s groundbreaking work with EvoS-Binghamton, I immediately saw the potential of this program for our campus. In fact, it struck me as such a great idea that I almost felt like a nit-wit for not thinking of it myself. Of course! Students with interests in my evolutionary psychology course SHOULD take a course with Tom Nolen in evolutionary biology. They should take a course in genetics with Jeff Reinking or Jen Waldo. They should take a course about bugs with Aaron Haselton. They should take Ken Nystrom’s human evolution course in anthropology. They should take a course with Alex Bartholomew in paleontology. They should hike into the Gunks – our local mountains – and learn about the evolutionary stories told by both the fossil-laden rocks and the rich biodiversity found in the forest – just minutes from our campus. Think about how much that would embellish their education! And we should bring in speakers on various topics related to evolution – to help students make connections across these courses – using the famously powerful nature of evolutionary theory – as a map that would allow for the building of intellectual bridges across different academic disciplines (AKA, “the islands of the ivory archipelago” (Wilson, 2007)).

Post-script: The EvoS program at SUNY New Paltz, about to enter its third year of existence, has exceeded any and all expectations I had when I worked to help launch it just a few years back. I really can’t overstate the excitement associated with this program in our community. Keep an eye out for updates to “Building Darwin’s Bridges” for details regarding EvoS-New Paltz as well as commentary on the EvoS Consortium. I’m fully convinced that the EvoS Consortium has potential to be the event that successfully (and finally) leads to the integration of Darwinism across all scholarly areas.

Post-post-script: Thanks to EvoS webmaster and journal editor, Rosemarie Chang, a true inspiration, for giving me the nudge I needed to start this blog!