www.epjournal.net – 2014. 12(1): 115-119 ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯
Book Review
Why We Still Can’t All Just Get Along
A Review of The Evolution of Violence, edited by Todd K. Shackelford and Ranald D. Hansen. Springer: New York, 2014, 244 pp., US$129.00, ISBN 978-1-4614-9313-6 (hardcover).
Craig T. Palmer, Department of Anthropology, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO. Email:
palmerct@missouri.edu
This edited volume contains a collection of eleven papers associated with a multidisciplinary, one-day conference on human violence held at Oakland University in Michigan. The conference appears to have been based on the sound logic that, in the wake of the book The Better Angels of Our Nature by Steven Pinker (2011), who also contributes the forward to the volume, there can be little doubt that violence was so frequent during such a long stretch of human existence that it must have been shaped by natural selection. Thus, an understanding of the evolutionary causes of violence can aid attempts to reduce various forms of current violent behavior. Taken as a whole, the volume contains a strong review of the recent literature on evolutionary explanations of some diverse forms of human violence. It also contains some fascinating insights likely to be valuable to a wide variety of researchers. However, the book fails to fulfill the expectations raised by the bold
title and the claims made on the back cover concerning the book’s content and its place in
the history of evolutionary explanations of human behavior.
Contrary to what might be inferred from the title, “The Evolution of Violence,” this book is not a coherent, comprehensive summary of the current state of evolutionary explanations of violence in general. All of the individual chapters make important contributions, but the volume as a whole would have benefitted from several structural
accompanying the 37 names listed under the letter “r” is “risk assessment.” Finally, the volume cries out for a concluding chapter summarizing where evolutionary explanations of violence currently stand, and what future directions may prove to be most worthwhile. Such a summarizing chapter could have also addressed, and corrected, some of the misunderstandings about evolutionary theory that readers new to the field might take away from the volume as a result of some of the arguments made in a few of the chapters.
Despite these issues, the chapters by David Buss and Joshua Duntley on intimate partner violence, Kevin Beaver et al. on the evolutionary behavioral genetics of violent crime, Catherine Salmon and Jessica Hehman on sibling conflict and siblicide, David Bjorklund and Patricia Hawley on the evolutionary approach to the development of aggressive behavior, and Cross and Campbell on violence and aggression in Women, all include clear summaries of recent research on their specific topics. Navarrete and McDonald provide an interesting look at the intersection of the study of sexual selection and the study of outgroup psychology by examining gender differences related to intergroup conflict. Joseph Carroll provides a summary of some of the evolutionary approaches to violence in literature, and provides several specific examples of his personal approach to evolutionary literary criticism. David Herring provides a detailed example of how evolutionary theory might be applied to reduce specific forms of violence in his discussion of child welfare law. Robin Vallacher and Christopher Brooks argue creatively that dynamical theory may be a necessary complement to evolutionary theory. Catherine Cross and Ann Campbell end the volume with a chapter discussing evolutionary explanations of violence and aggression in women. The other two chapters, one by Lawrence Keeley and the other by Steven Leblanc, are the ones most directly linked to
Pinker’s The Better Angels of Our Nature because both concern the archaeological and anthropological evidence of warfare in the past. In this sense, these chapters provide what first appears to be a solid foundation for the rest of the book. Unfortunately, there are some cracks in this foundation too large to be ignored.
Before examining the shortcomings in Keeley’s chapter, and to a lesser extent in LeBlanc’s, it is important to note that they occur within the context established by the following claims made on the back cover of the book:
The Evolution of Violence explores and explodes myths about evolutionary theory
while restoring Darwinian concepts to modern-day relevance. In these provocative pages, violence scholars from across the disciplines elegantly argue that
evolutionary perspectives, far from conflicting with current science, complement and enhance standard social theory. (my emphasis)
fails to support either of these claims, and actually leads to the conclusion that although evolutionary theory continues to produce potentially useful knowledge for reducing violence, a great deal of education about evolutionary theory remains to be done before the contributions of evolutionary theory can be adequately evaluated, much less applied, by most standard social scientists.
Any illusion about the myth of genetic determinism being demolished once and for all by the volume is abruptly ended in the second chapter, “War Before Civilization—15
Years On” by Lawrence Keeley. The chapter begins with an elegant and convincing presentation of evidence regarding the high frequency of war in the past, but Keeley then explains why both he and Stephen LeBlanc have dismissed evolutionary explanations of warfare, or what Keeley calls variously the “biogenetic,” “genetic,” “selection,” and
“genetic ‘evolutionary’” explanations of war. Keeley writes:
Leblanc and I both have noted, indeed emphasized, for example, that in the archaeological sequences of our respective regions, there have been very bellicose periods with settlements fortified and/or moved to more defensible locations, high proportions of human remains showing weapons traumas or “disrespectful” treatment of some (enemy?) dead, and great abundances of weapons yet no increases in hunting. Yet, there have also been periods in our respective foci when evidences of warfare were less common. We both argue that for situations in which the more bellicose were the ancestors or descendants of much more peaceful people, it is difficult to see how genetics could play a role. Unless, of course, violent rapacious (males) were deleterious mutants whose genes were removed by selection before they could have many descendants or died before they reproduced, unlike the less violent and rapacious. (p. 29; my emphasis)
In a sense, Keeley is correct; it is indeed difficult to understand how evolutionary explanations could account for fluctuations in the amount of violence if one adheres to the myth that evolutionary explanations are a form of genetic determinism and fails to understand that all phenotypes are always the result of an interaction of genes with environmental factors (i.e., GxE=P). Although LeBlanc’s chapter on “Warfare and Human
Nature” does not accept the myth of genetic determinism as explicitly as Keeley’s, LeBlanc
does provide a disturbing answer to the question he asks in regard to what it would mean if a truly peaceful society were to be found. LeBlanc writes, “Would this mean that we as humans are not hopelessly programmed for warfare? Probably not” (p. 82). LeBlanc’s answer implies the view that whether or not a peaceful society ever existed, we are hopelessly programed for violence. This may just be a poor choice of words, but it may also indicate an adherence to the myth that if violence is both universal and the result of natural selection, it is genetically determined and must therefore be inevitable.
have any effects. Likewise, without genes, there would be no organisms to be affected by
environmental factors” (p. 128). Thus, Beaver et al. explain that when one understands
evolutionary theory “. . . it is easy to see that there is nothing deterministic about genes and
that genes are not fatalistic” (p. 127; my emphasis). Given that the goal of the volume was to bring together scholars studying violence from a variety of disciplines, it is not surprising that there are differences among the contributions in regard to their level of understanding of evolutionary theory. However, a volume containing blatant misunderstandings of evolutionary theory, while claiming that it corrects them, is more likely to reinforce, rather than “explode” misunderstandings of evolutionary theory, especially for readers of the volume new to evolutionary theory.
Although not containing such glaring misunderstandings, two other chapters contain apparent weaknesses worth noting. The chapter by Vallacher and Brooks argues that dynamical theory may be a necessary complement to evolutionary theory. Dynamical theory holds that all actions, whether those of atoms, planets or living organisms, have very complex proximate causes. Although this is certainly true, the arguments for why this needs to be stressed in evolutionary theory, any more than is currently the case, are neither clear nor convincing. Further, some of the wording in the chapter might reinforce some common misunderstandings of evolutionary theory. For example, Vallacher and Brooks
write “In its most basic sense, a dynamical system is simply a set of interconnected
elements that evolve in time, with the elements continually influencing each other to
achieve a coordinated state that characterizes the system as a whole” (195; my emphasis). The first problem with this statement is the use of the word “evolve” to refer to something accurately described as “change,” but not something that qualifies as evolution, at least not in the specific sense of evolution one would expect to find used within the context of this volume. The second problem with this statement is that it could be easily taken to mean that the goal of evolution is to create a coordinated state. Although natural selection often produces organisms that might be described as having a coordinated state, it is incorrect to see this state as the goal of evolution. If having a less coordinated state had the consequence of creating more descendants in subsequent generations, natural selection would result in organisms with less coordinated states. A specific example where the
authors’ wording may give the impression that a coordinated state is the goal of evolution is their statement that dynamical theory is crucial to the field of ecology because, according to Vallacher and Brooks, a central question ecologists try to answer “is how animals
interact to generate and maintain a balance between predator and prey” (p. 195). This sentence could easily be interpreted as supporting the view, popular in the 1960s before the current understanding of natural selection took shape, that living things interact in certain ways in order to reach the goal of an ecological balance. In place of a badly needed summarizing final chapter, the volume ends with the chapter by Cross and Campbell
entitled “Violence and Aggression in Women.” This chapter provides a useful review of the
evolutionary explanations that have been put forth to account for forms of violence and aggression engaged in by women. Unfortunately, instead of merely describing this information, much of the chapter is structured to support the claim that the evolutionary
study of aggression has suffered from an “androcentric bias in previous evolutionary
descriptions and explanations aimed at explaining violence and aggression perpetrated by men than by women, to support the claim that this is the result of androcentric bias would appear to require demonstrating that this difference in attention is greater than the difference in the actual amount and severity of violence and aggression perpetrated by men than by women. Instead of presenting convincing evidence that this is so, the chapter supports its charge of androcentric bias in evolutionary explanations largely on the
argument that evolutionists have only asked the question “Why are males so aggressive?” (p. 215). “For a complete [i.e., non-biased] picture of sex differences in aggression,” Cross
and Campbell write, “we must also ask, ‘Why do females refrain from aggression?’” (ibid.)
This argument is vacuous because any evolutionary explanation of aggressive behavior includes, implicitly if not explicitly, a consideration of the costs and benefits of the aggressive act in comparison with non-aggressive alternatives. Thus, inherent in any evolutionary explanation of aggressive behavior, whether performed by males or females, is the question of why did the individual engage in aggression instead of non-aggressive alternatives. Conversely, any evolutionary explanation of non-aggressive behavior implies a consideration of the costs and benefits of the non-aggressive act in comparison with aggressive alternatives. It is no more androcentric to fail to explicitly ask why a female performing a non-aggressive behavior “refrained from” performing an aggressive behavior, than it is gynocentric to fail to explicitly ask why a male performing an aggressive behavior
“refrained from” performing a non-aggressive behavior. Thus, instead of exploding the myth that evolutionary explanations are, or have been, the result of sexist ideologies instead of evidence, the concluding chapter of the volume endorses this myth.
Such flaws in what is generally a very strong volume take on greater significance
because of the applied dimension of the volume and its claim of “restoring Darwinian
concepts to modern-day relevance” (back cover). Before the findings of evolutionary explanations of human behavior can be appropriately used to effectively change human behavior in whatever ways humans decide they want it changed, the myths held by critics of evolutionary theory must indeed be exploded. Claiming to have exploded such myths when one has not actually done so only retards progress towards this end. The further claim that the rejection of these myths will reveal that evolutionary theory has never really been in conflict with standard social science is simply false. Standard social science will only cease to be in conflict with evolutionary theory when standard social scientists understand evolutionary theory. This volume demonstrates that this is not yet the case, but overall it takes an important step in the right direction.
References
Pinker, S. (2002). The blank slate: The modern denial of human nature. New York: Viking. Pinker, S. (2011). The better angels of our nature: Why violence has declined. New York:
