Human Behavior and Evolution Society

Newsletter

Fall, 1999

Volume VIII, No.II

Editor: Kevin MacDonald

THE VIEW FROM THE PRESIDENT'S WINDOW

THE MOST TESTABLE CONCEPT IN BIOLOGY, PART 1

JOHN TOOBY

My two pieces of bed-time reading late last night, each selected for its

promise to deliver me from the burden of an unnecessary excess of

consciousness, were a history of twentieth-century physics, and the lead

article from this month's Linguafranca, entitled "Oh My Darwin! Who's the

Fittest Evolutionary Thinker of Them All?" What I found striking in the

history of modern physics was the fact that, repeatedly, the new theories

that observation and logic had forced physicists to construct were far

better-far more true-than even their most committed proponents believed.

Time and time again, the theories were telling physicists things that they

were unwilling to accept. Planck could take the first few logical steps

toward quantum mechanics, but his allegiance to the norms of reasonability

forged in classical physics prevented him from going further. Einstein

tweaked with general relativity to eliminate the expanding universe that

subsequently Hubble showed was actually there. Although in his paper on the

photoelectric effect, Einstein was able to open the door so that quantum

mechanics could move ahead into the territory that Planck had been unwilling

to enter, Einstein himself could not subsequently accept fundamental

features of quantum mechanics as it developed, and so was unable to

participate in or contribute to the decades of rapid theoretical advances in

physics that followed. "God does not play dice with the universe," said

Einstein. His reductio ad absurdum, a thought experiment called the EPR

paradox, was designed to show the incompleteness of quantum mechanics.

Instead, recent tests bear out the bizarre predictions of the theory, rather

than validating the premise that the principles that struck Einstein (and

virtually everyone else) as paradoxical could not be built into the

structure of nature. Similarly, despite the fact that accepted theory

predicted them, most physicists once thought that black holes were

preposterous theoretical entities lacking physical reality, whereas now most

astronomers consider them key explanations for their observations. On issue

after issue, logic operating on observation led the way ahead, dragging the

few researchers able to dispossess themselves of their common sense

grudgingly behind. As Bohr replied to Einstein, "Stop telling God what to

do," a remark that implicitly recognizes that reality is truly strange, and

not always likely to tailor itself to suit our intuitions.

One conclusion to be drawn is that successful sciences work in a way that is

almost a mirror reversal of what social constructionists maintain: The

cutting edge of scientific advance is not primarily the rubber stamp

expression of what the dominant culture already thinks. Reality is

consistently strange, and to discover that strangeness requires one to

jettison much of one's culture. Successful science is not the projection of

cultural prejudices, but the repudiation of them, and so science since the

Copernican revolution has been one of the major forces for cultural change.

Victorian belief was turned on its head, not ratified, by where physics led.

Another conclusion to take to heart is that scientists have been successful

in proportion to the extent that they unburdened themselves of the pressures

of cultural forces, accepted ideas, the normal bounds of what is considered

reasonable, and their own emotional responses to theoretical possibilities,

and instead paid attention to where logic and evidence led. Neither physics

nor biology has been helped by our impulse to be "reasonable." Intuitive

processes of social negotiation tempt us to believe that the truth about

something must lie between "extremes", but the history of science does not

bear this out. Far more often, the truth lies immensely far beyond what the

most intoxicated and delirious of the radicals contemplates.

The world that Darwin and Wallace led us into is every bit as strange as

quantum mechanics: a world of chemical replicators, billion-year-old

cellular symbiosis, intrauterine siblicide, intragenomic conflict,

kin-selected self-sacrifice, chemical computers, fish that change sex in

response to social status, parasite-driven sexual recombination, brood

parasites mimicking host offspring appearance, retroviral insertions

breaking down species barriers-not to mention the direct causal linkage

leading from trillions of individual selective events distributed over

immense numbers of hominids in (for example) ancient east Africa, to an

informational distillation reflected in nucleotides chained together into 23

immense molecules, to a neural structure that patterns the forms of our

emotions and concepts to the replicative demands of the vanished past. No

novel, no film, no philosophy, no deliberate dissident attempt to rebel

against everything orthodox is remotely as outlandish as these discoveries.

Despite repeated (and hilariously, hopelessly, inaccurate) claims that the

Darwinian turn in the behavioral sciences is simply the projection of what

our culture demands and rewards, the strange Darwinism that is transforming

the scientific world is simply beyond the conceptual horizon of any existing

lay culture, nonbiological scientific community, and even of most

biologists.

The audience for public intellectuals, on the other hand, is this broader

social world, and one way public intellectuals can become popular is

precisely through exploiting this gap-that is, through pandering to the

entrenched cultural biases, appetites, vested interests, and

misunderstandings that are inevitable in those who have not had the

opportunity to consider the scientific issues as carefully. From the vantage

point of normality, the scientific forefront will often appear far-fetched,

absurd, contrary to common sense, disturbing, hard to understand, and

subversive of morality-a sitting duck for exploitative misportrayal. Even

worse, owing to the natural course of cultural epidemiology, those public

intellectuals who succumb to this temptation will tend to be mistaken by the

intellectual community at large to be leaders and theoretical powerhouses in

their disciplines: Isn't it natural to anoint someone as the authority

because he reassures you about what you already want to believe? Williams,

Hamilton, and Maynard Smith, for example, remain relatively unknown outside

of the evolutionary community, despite their transformation of our

understanding of the world. In contrast, Steve Gould correctly and

appealingly paints the biological world as full of marvels, but safe

marvels, distant marvels-in his telling, strange realities do not wander

among us or within us, nor influence our thoughts and our choices. Nothing

too new or threatening here. The evolutionary community is fortunate to have

such supremely gifted people as Richard Dawkins, Steve Pinker, and Dan

Dennett, who can brilliantly synthesize their own contributions while at the

same time performing the hard and subtle work of finding ways to bring

non-specialist readers into the eerie universe that professionals

understand. But we also remain burdened with public intellectuals whose

success is based on playing to and hence disinforming readers, thanks to the

ongoing social demand for such figures.

This brings us to the article in Linguafranca ("The Review of Academic

Life"), which unsurprisingly reflects the dominant prejudices endemic to the

culture of academics. It is not without its high points, as when Steve Gould

rebukes audience members who were leaving before his talk was over, by

echoing Jesus to his disciples: "but most of these folks you have all the

time. Me you only got for a little while." Still, the article is organized

around the traditional and familiar criticisms that Gould and Lewontin have

made of modern selectionist and adaptationist thinking. What is important to

recognize is that these arguments have won the hearts and minds of large

numbers of neuroscientists, biomedical researchers, anthropologists,

psychologists, linguists, and even a substantial number of non-evolutionary

biologists. Many in the intellectual world at large now have come to believe

that the core biological idea of adaptation is a weak, non-empirical concept

whose application involves unfalsifiable claims and subjective criteria, and

whose use is therefore inherently scientifically suspect. Explanatory

accounts of how the world acquired its present organization, such as are

common in geology, astronomy, and physics, are now viewed with a knowing

condescension when they appear in biology and the behavioral sciences.

It is easy to see that Gould and Lewontin have earned their reputation for

sophistication, rigor, and intellectual depth through their own stringent

refusal to make claims that are unsubstantiated, unfalsifiable, or just so

stories. For example, many have heard of their argument that language and

most other human cognitive abilities are side effects of the fact that our

brain grew big for reasons that had nothing to do with the fitness

consequences of those cognitive abilities. Inconveniently for anyone who

might want to subject these claims to empirical test, Lewontin and Gould

have left these reasons unspecified, but they have made clear why: They

assert they simply cannot be reconstructed. In his recent article "The

Evolution of Cognition: Questions We Will Never Answer," Lewontin shares his

findings that "It might be interesting to know how cognition (whatever that

is) arose and spread and changed, but we cannot know. Tough luck."

Displaying his easy mastery of the technical details of modern neuroscience,

Lewontin explains that our cognitive abilities are epiphenomena of "all

those loose connections with nothing to do."

One can see advanced intellects from all over the world, pouring over the

Linguafranca article, nodding slowly, sagely rubbing their chins, the

corrugator muscles on their foreheads working as they struggle to absorb

these profound ideas from the intellectual leaders of evolutionary biology.

There are all those loose connections in the brain! They have nothing to do!

Unlike in my stereo, loose connections in computational systems reliably

produce highly organized information-processing, rather than noise as those

feeble engineers, computer scientists, and probability theorists think!

Recursion is a non-adaptive trait! Lewontin says so! And Lewontin also knows

we cannot know! "I'm a man, and I don't go around screwing young girls,"

Lewontin says. "I'm human, and so I have to be explained." Ah, of course-if

only those benighted adaptationists were aware of and addressed the question

of behavioral variation, rather than foolishly claiming that every member of

the species expresses identical behavior. With Lewontin pointing the way,

perhaps they might even eventually hit on the idea that cognitive programs

might have contingent procedures built into them that respond differently to

different circumstances. In the far distant future, perhaps they might even

test hypotheses about such conditional decision systems! Intellectuals,

contemptuous of the abysmally low standards for testable claims prevailing

among selectionist biologists must be impressed at how these ideas stack up

in comparison. One can see that Popper himself would be heartened at this

introduction of such scientific rigor into biology, and of the tight fit

between cautious inference and careful observation.

Enough. That such comically crank ideas appear competitive to fair-minded

third parties signals a problem that evolutionary biologists must analyze,

face, and solve for the further development of our discipline. And leaving

aside the separate problem of disinformation, at a fundamental level the

fault is ours, for not making the theory underlying key scientific practices

fully explicit, so that its objectivity can be appreciated. Adaptation is a

conceptual keystone of Darwinism. After Darwin, George Williams, in

particular, set us on the theoretical road toward the careful development of

this idea, and many others, from Dawkins to Thornhill have made major

contributions to our understanding of it. But if many still have difficulty

appreciating the objective nature of the concept, then this is a sign that

we need to go further toward developing formal measures that can be

skeptically and consensually applied across the evolutionary sciences,

producing potentially quantitative measures of adaptation for

hypothesis-testing purposes. To practicing evolutionary scientists, this may

seem tedious, cumbersome, and altogether unnecessary for their own

understanding, but controversies end and sciences advance when the implicit

is made explicit so that even those who are not central participants can

follow the demonstrations being made. So, to maintain and broaden the scope

of Darwinism, a set of measures needs to be developed that are so

self-evidently and empirically unassailable that fair-minded individuals

will be able to recognize the crankish positions without the enormous waste

of time and resources that it takes today.

What is genuinely at issue? Although Lewontin, with his usual care, defines

an adaptationist as someone who "assumes without further proof that all

aspects of the morphology, physiology and behavior of organisms are adaptive

optimal solutions to problems," he knows that all parties are agreed that

the features of organisms are there because of some combination of

selection, engineering byproducts of selection, and chance. So what is the

debate actually about? For all of their rambling rhetoric about testability,

falsifiability, and empiricism, Gould and Lewontin not only display no

actual interest in such things, but manifest an active and desperate

antipathy toward the development, acceptance, or recognition of methods that

could reliably decide whether, in a specific case, something was the product

of selection, an incidental byproduct, or a random outcome. The actual

identity of their opponents, whom they call adaptationists, are those who

maintain that there are methodological and theoretical tools, and standards

of evidence, that allow the investigation and reliable determination, in

specific cases, of which category a trait falls into (and not the

nonexistent set of people who believe that all traits are optimal

adaptations). Against this, Gould and Lewontin adopt the position that "we

cannot know."

So, what are the objective criteria that can be used to determine whether

something is an adaptation? An adaptation is a set of features, in an

organism, whose genetic basis was maintained and organized in the past

because it reliably caused outcomes, in ancestral environments (continuing

up until the parental generation), that led to the propagation of its

genetic basis. How do you test whether something is an adaptation? George

Williams' answer is that you determine whether there is a nonrandom

coordination between an ancestrally recurrent adaptive problem (which

includes the adaptation's environment) and the properties of the

hypothesized adaptation, such that the adaptation solves the problem in a

better than random way. The causal process that generates engineering

byproducts is random with respect to function, as are the stochastic

components of evolution that lead to random gene substitution. Accordingly,

selection is the only force that modifies organismic design nonrandomly with

respect to function, and it can be recognized by its nonrandom effects.

Consequently, the only two explanations for a functional coordination are

coincidence (which standard statistical tools are perfectly capable of

calculating the probability of) and selection. To establish something as an

adaptation, all one needs to do is to collect evidence that justifies the

rejection of the hypothesis that the structure arose by chance (with respect

to function). The "subjectivity" in the concept of adaptation-when made

explicit-rests in the entirely standard question of where a scientific

community wishes to set its statistical criterion for hypothesis rejection.

If the concept of adaptation is to be considered subjective, then so is

every other instance of hypothesis testing in every science. Just as in any

other science, hypothesis-testing is based on statistical inference, and the

probability of obtaining the observations that support the hypothesis if the

hypothesis were true, as compared to the probability of obtaining the same

observations if the hypothesis were not true.

This method involves comparing the problem-solving quality of a hypothesized

adaptation with the problem-solving properties of other possible

alternatives, sampled at random from an appropriate formal space of

possibilities. If, like a key in a lock, the properties of the hypothesized

adaptation are sufficiently better than random at solving the adaptive

problem (in a way that can be computed in some fashion, given a consensually

agreed on statistical criterion) then one is justified in concluding it is

an adaptation. Hence, one can evaluate the likelihood that something is an

adaptation (or evaluate the quality of an adaptation) by comparing it to

members of the set of possible alternative configurations of phenotypic

properties. Improbable outcomes are defined as belonging to a target set

that is small relative to the set of possible outcomes, and specified

independently of the observations-in this case, by an independent physical

analysis of function. When the adaptation is too improbably functional to

have arisen by chance, the chance hypothesis is rejected. Frequentist

approaches to probability give an objective and quantitative character to

computations of probability that can be useful in constructing formal

approaches to the analysis of adaptations. Entropic processes are always

acting to disorder ordered systems, so the tools in information theory can

also be used to measure the information content or improbability of

adaptations.

Why should we get so pretentiously and annoyingly formal about something so

straightforward? Because the alien nature of Darwinism creates a wide market

for claims that the basic theories and results in biology are weaker than

those of other sciences, whereas in fact they are often far stronger.

How do you go about generating an appropriate space of possible

alternatives, and objectively quantifying the process of sampling and

comparing? There are many ways this can be done, depending on the exact

nature of phenomenon being studied. For example, one might take a structural

gene and compare it to the set of all alternative nucleotide combinations of

the same length. (To limit the alternatives to the same number of base pairs

is an arbitrary choice made to be conservative-that is, to cut against the

hypothesis of adaptation-and for mathematical convenience. The actual space

of alternatives is much larger.) If the gene's structure is simply the

output of processes that are random with respect to function-that is, in

which selection played no role-then there is no reason to expect that

substitution with a randomly generated stretch of nucleotides will degrade

the organism's fitness any more often than it will increase it. But for

virtually anything that is not junk DNA, we know from many converging

sources the true situation: genes are, in design space, astronomically far

from random with respect to function, and nearly all randomly generated

substitutions would impair if not kill the organism. For those for whom this

is not evident, it is quite possible to conduct such experiments in the

laboratory with modern genetic techniques. Naturally occurring mutations are

far more benign in comparison. As bad as many mutations are, they are far

better than randomly generated nucleotide sequences would be, since

mutations are created by starting with a functional gene, and introducing

only some random changes into it. (It is also clear from such reasoning that

neutral genes are not really neutral at all with respect to functionality

when the true comparison set is introduced: neutral alleles are in fact

highly fit alleles, representing only a tiny fraction of the set of possible

nucleotide sequences -those that happen to be approximately equivalent in

their high levels of fitness to other alleles present at the same locus.)

Similar comparison sets can be computed for proteins by generating the set

of all possible amino acid sequences of a specified length. Comparing random

sequences with existing proteins, where this has been done, once again

highlights that amazing degree of functionality present in biological

systems: Rhodopsin, or hemoglobin, or the active elements of rattlesnake

venom, or chlorophyll, or the proteins that allow the lens to be

transparent-all occupy extremely narrow regions of protein space, and only a

tiny subset of all possible substitutions would produce molecules that are

remotely comparable in function. One doesn't need to create all possible

proteins to do this. All you need to do generate random samples large enough

for purposes of meaningful statistical comparison, and researchers in

molecular biology have already, in effect, done this. Random features are

recognizable by, among other things, the tolerance of the organism's

propagation to their substitution, and functional features are recognizable

by the organism's intolerance to their being modified.

Once one ventures outside the realm of individual genes or proteins, other

property sets can be evaluated using other comparison sets, to explore

adaptations involving larger anatomical structures, physiological processes,

enzymatic pathways, the physical distribution of proteins in tissues, the

timing of events in development, the logical organization of computational

circuitry, or the patterns in behavior. One yardstick is the set of

physically possible arrangements of chemical elements of equal mass to the

adaptation in question, in proportion to the frequency of those elements in

the organism's environment, or in the rest of the body of the organism-a

vast and bleak set of inert alternatives. Skeptics might argue that this is

an improper comparison, because we don't know the subset of these

arrangements that could be realized within a biological system. But one

cannot make such an argument about any arrangement already present in some

organism on earth, and so the set of features present in the totality of

organisms constitutes a possible comparison set. Although arguments about

phylogenetic constraints might be made against using this set, one can fall

back to an even more restricted set: It is hard to deny that structures

present in some other location of the organism's body are possible in some

causal sense for the organism. So, another comparison set is supplied by

randomly swapping around features of the human body (e.g., gastric acid for

glial cells; eyes facing inward rather than out; tibia in the mitral valve)

at whatever scale and according to whatever descriptive grid is consensually

persuasive. Similarly, one can remove items, since the nonproduction of

complex entities is always more likely than their production, and is easily

attainable by knocking out their genetic basis. For example, if you turned

all the hemoglobin in the body into water, or cytochrome c, or cortisol, or

glucose, or any other chemical found in the body, you would die: a notable

impairment, demonstrating that hemoglobin, out of the very conservative

comparison set provided by the tens of thousands of chemicals produced in

the body, is the product of selection. Going through the list of structural

proteins, and doing such a thought experiment, one is forced to conclude

that the constituents of the body are, by immense margins, improbably

well-organized by selection. In almost all cases, their removal or their

substitution by random alternatives would be harmful or catastrophic.

Natural selection causes organisms to levitate at dizzying heights over the

random disorder generated by entropic processes in the physical world. I

suspect that, just as in physics, our theories are far more powerful than we

think they are. And rather than being unfalsifiable, hypotheses about

adaptation are exceptionally easy to falsify: It is easy to demonstrate that

something is not well-organized for performing a specified function, and for

the products of selection, it is equally easy to falsify the claim, using

objective measures, that something is the product of chance.

In the next installment, I'll discuss the objective description of adaptive

problems, optimality, appropriate comparison sets for behavior, neural

circuitry, and other phenomena, as well as why it might be worth the bother

of developing such seemingly sterile formal demonstrations. In the meantime,

we are stuck with all those loose connections with nothing to do.

HBES 2000 ANNUAL MEETING, JUNE 7-11

AMHERST COLLEGE, AMHERST, MASSACHUSETTS

>From Bill Zimmerman, Local Host:

Our first meeting in the new millennium will be at Amherst College, June 7

to 11. Amherst is 1 hour by car from Bradley Airport (Hartford/Springfield)

and 1 hour 50 minutes from Boston. The Town of Amherst, also home to the

University of Massachusetts, is surrounded by wooded hills, open fields,

farms and conservation land. There is a 9-mile bike path between Amherst and

Northampton, and there are many hiking trails throughout the valley. The

College has many tennis courts, two basketball courts, an indoor track, a

pool and a large, brand new exercise room. Nearby are the towns of

Northampton (Smith College) and South Hadley (Mt. Holyoke College). Further

to the west are the scenic Berkshire Hills.

The banquet (keynote) speaker will be Richard Wrangham, and so far the

following invited plenary speakers have accepted: Laura Betzig, Herbert

Gintis, Marc Hauser, Douglas Kenrick, Paul Sherman, and Robert Trivers.

Special symposium participants are, so far: Mildred Dickemann, Nancy

Easterlin, Steven Pinker, Elizabeth Spelke, Robert Storey, Michele

Sugiyama, Frank Sulloway, Robert Wright and Margo Wilson. The

symposium sessions so far organized are: primate and human cognitive

development; Darwinian history; Darwinian medicine (pathogens and

psychopathy); hominid transitions; evolution and law; manipulations of

meaning in literary texts; and economics, game theory and social evolution.

The meeting forms (for registration, housing, meals) and the call and

instructions for submitted presentations and for proposed symposia, and

panels and other sessions will be out on or before January 15. They will be

posted at the meeting's website and sent by regular mail to those who wish

to receive them that way. The meeting's website is functioning:

www.amherst.edu/~hbes2000. The program committee members are: Laura Betzig,

David Buss, Paul Ewald, Mark Flinn, Eric Smith and Bill Zimmerman (who is

also the local host).

Amherst is a beautiful place. The weather this time of the year is usually

warm (not hot) and sunny; the College's food, catering, housing and

facilities in general are amazing. The meeting program already looks like

something HBES'ers should not miss !

BUSINESS MEETING MINUTES FOR HBES, 1999

UNIVERSITY OF UTAH, JUNE 5, 1999

President John Tooby called the meeting to order.

Tooby announced that Bill Irons is the new President-Elect of the society.

Elizabeth Cashden and Nicholas Blurton Jones were elected as Council

members, and Peter Richerson is the new Treasurer. The new student

representatives are Kevin Kniffin and April Bleske.

Kevin MacDonald read the minutes from the 1998 Business Meeting at the

University of California-Davis. Motion to approve the minutes by Leda

Cosmides, seconded by Michelle Sugiyama. The minutes were approved.

Patrick McKim gave the Treasurer's Report:

Current Assets are $28,000.00, of which $2,400 is reserved for the Student

Fund, $13,411 is reserved for subscriptions (2001-2003), $3,000 is reserved

for newsletters, $400 for the 2001 elections, $500.00 for renewal notices-a

total of $19,711 and leaving a surplus of $8,289.

Major expenses include: Subscriptions $33,463.00, Postage $4141.00,

Foundation Fees, $980.00, 1998 Awards $1,500.00

Income:Dues, $46,000.00, Donation, $1,500.00, Interest , $725.00

Current Membership: Regular 512; Student 281; Total: 793 (last year at this

time: 730).

Jeremy Sherman volunteered to help with the HTML version of the membership

directory. He will be in touch with Peter Richerson, the new Treasurer of

the society.

Alan Rogers made a motion to approve the Treasurer's Report and the motion

was seconded by Bill Irons. The report was approved.

Tooby suggested encouraging fund raising from wealthy individuals. He also

suggested encouraging contributions on the membership form. Both proposals

were approved.

The student report was given by April Bleske. Graduate students are

concerned about prices for HBES in London, . HBES also has a growing

undergraduate student population, and London may potentially harm that

growth. Nevertheless, the graduate students are generally excited about the

prospect of having the conference in London.

Martin Daly gave the Publication Committee report: Human Nature is doing

well; it is attempting to increase subscriptions. The committee recommended

that the HBES-L email list be used more, and in particular for announcing

papers, conferences, etc. Bill Zimmerman, editor of the society newsletter,

is attempting to put the newsletter online. Evolution and Human Behavior has

a high rating for citations in the Social Science Citation Index. Time for

editorial decision is approximately three months. One-third of submitted

manuscripts are accepted, and there are no dramatic differences in

acceptance rate by academic discipline.

Steve Gangestad, who is in charge of liaisons with other societies, was not

present. Tooby reported that the society is favorable to such liaisons.

Tooby announced that the 2000 meeting will be at Amherst College in Amherst,

Massachusetts. Local hosts will be William Zimmerman and Paul Ewald. The

tentative dates are June 7-10. Keynote speaker will be Richard Wrangham.

Tooby announced that so far London is the only place suggested for 2001.

There is a concern at the cost of such a meeting. Geoffrey Miller would be

the local host. There is a possibility that the University of Texas would be

the site in 2002, but thus far no commitment.

It was suggested that web-site registration for HBES conferences should be

facilitated. Alan Rogers reported that submission of abstracts for the Utah

conference by email and on the website worked very well.

Tooby suggested that people with experience in organizing HBES conferences

work with those who are hosting the Amherst conference.

Bill Irons moved that the meeting be adjourned, and the motion was seconded

by

Martin Daly. The meeting adjourned at 1:10 PM.

Submitted by Kevin MacDonald.

These minutes have not been approved.

ANNOUNCEMENTS

HBES-L. All HBES members are requested to subscribe to the HBES-l email list

for purposes of rapid and inexpensive dissemination of official HBES

business and news. To subscribe, send mail from your normal address to

listproc@lists.missouri.edu with the following request: subscribe HBES-L

Your Name, where Your Name is your name, e.g., Charles Darwin, to:

listproc@lists.missouri.edu.

Please check your mailing label. If today is later than the date on the

label, your membership has expired.

International Society of Human Ethology. The 15th biennial conference of the

International Society of Human Ethology will be held at the Palacio Fonseca

in Salamanca, Spain, August 9-13, 2000. Symposia, individual papers and

poster proposals that address any aspect of research within Human Ethology

are welcome. For information on abstract submission, contact: Linda Mealey,

Psychology Department, College of St. Benedict, St. Joseph, MN 56374 USA;

tel. 1-320-363-5481; fax 1-320-363-5582; e-mail: lmealey@csbsju.edu.

Conference fax number: +34 923 361 569; Conference telephone number: +34 636

354 913; Conference e-mail: humet@gugu.usal.es

European Sociobiological Society Conference: 25 Years of Sociobiology: Time

for Reflection. August 31 to September 3, 2000: The European Sociobiological

Society has been invited by the Association for Politics and the Life

Sciences (APLS) to organize in its annual conference a main section to

evaluate 25 years of sociobiology. APLS is an international and

interdisciplinary association of scholars, scientists, and policymakers

concerned with problems or issues that involve politics or public policy and

one or more of the life sciences (see http://www.lssu.edu/apls). Next year,

APLS will have its 20th annual conference in Washington, DC, from August 31

to September 3. Proposals for papers should follow standard APLS procedures

of evaluation, but authors are advised to channel the proposals via Vincent

Falger and Osamu Sakura, the mediating organizers of this anniversary

conference. The usual ESS free paper session will take place directly under

the aegis of APLS. Non-ESS members who want to present papers on the

anniversary theme will be organized in one of the ESS panels. For details,

please contact Vincent Falger at V.Falger@law.uu.nl

International Political Science Association ResearchCommittee #12: Call for

Papers. Deadline: January 3, 2000. The International Political Science

Association Research Committee #12 is designed to facilitate the study of

the linkage between biology and politics. This is a call for papers for

panel space to be allocated to the Committee at next year's American

Political Science Association meeting in Washington, D.C. We welcome papers

that examine the full range of subjects within the area of biology and

politics, such as biopolicy, bioethics, and the biobehavioral study of

political phenomena. Anyone interested in preparing a paper for presentation

should send an abstract to: Dr. Albert Somit Distinguished Professor

Emeritus Room 256, Lesar Law Building Southern Illinois University

Carbondale, IL 62901

OR

Dr. Steven A. Peterson School of Public Affairs Penn State Harrisburg777 W.

Harrisburg Pike Middletown, PA 17057

Anyone interested in chairing a panel or serving as a discussant should

likewise contact either Dr. Somit or Dr. Peterson. Deadline for submissions

is January 3, 2000.

Psychology, Evolution and Gender, a new journal, is now up and running, and

we encourage submissions from the HBES community. Please send manuscripts to

Dr Paula Nicolson, SCHARR, University of Sheffield, Regent Court, 30 Regent

Street, Sheffield, UK S1 4DA

Tel +44 (0) 114 222 0777; Fax +44 (0) 114 272 4095; E-mail

p.nicolson@sheffield.ac.uk or s.j.thorpe@gre.ac.uk

Population and Environment: A Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies is under

new editorship and encourages contributions informed by evolutionary

perspectives. Population and Environment focuses on the linkages among

demographic and environmental variables, and features contributions from

demographers, anthropologists, psychologists, and behavioral ecologists.

Advisory Board members include Patricia Draper, Anne Ehrlich, Paul Ehrlich,

Mark Flinn, Ray Hames, Garrett Hardin, Henry Harpending, Gary Johnson, Bobbi

S. Low, David Pimental, J. Philippe Rushton, Frank. K. Salter, and J.

Richard Udry. Please send submissions to: Kevin MacDonald, Editor;

Department of Psychology, California State University-Long Beach, Long

Beach, CA 90840-0901 USA.

Cape Cod Institute, July 17-21, 2000. Nancy L. Segal, Ph.D., "Twins and Us."

Also speaking: John S. Price, D.M., Russell Gardner, M.D., James Brody,

Ph.D. Information from Jim Brody (jbrody@compuserve.com) or Gilbert Levin,

Ph.D., 718-430-8782, Cape Cod Institute, Einstein Medical College, Bronx,

NY.

Society for Evolutionary Analysis in Law. The 3rd Annual Conference of the

Society for Evolutionary Analysis in Law (SEAL) will take place October 13th

&14th at the Indiana University School of Law in Bloomington, Indiana.

Further information about SEAL can be obtained at

http://www.law.asu.edu/jones/seal/, or from Professor Owen Jones at

owen.jones@asu.edu. Please contact Professor Jeffrey Stake at

stake@indiana.edu for conference registration information. SEAL is a

scholarly association dedicated to fostering interdisciplinary exploration

of issues at the intersection of law, biology, and evolutionary theory,

improving the models of human behavior relevant to law, and promoting the

integration of life science and social science perspectives on law-relevant

topics through scholarship, teaching, and empirical research.

Second International Behavioral Development Symposium on the "Biological

Basis of Sexual Orientation, Sexual Identity, and Gender-Related Behavior"

on May 25-27, 2000 at Minot State University. Those interested in attending

either as presenters or as observers may contact Dr. Lee Ellis in the

Division of Social Science at Minot State University, Minot, ND 58707, or

visit the symposium web site at http://www.ndcd.org/ibds.

The University of Louisiana at Lafayette (formerly the University of

Southwestern Louisiana) has initiated a new Ph.D. program that provides

unique opportunities for studying human cognitive and neurobiological

evolution. The Ph.D. program is offered by the university's Institute of

Cognitive Science. The Laboratory of Comparative Neuroscience, which is

affiliated with the ICS, is also seeking applicants for a postdoctoral

position. For additional information, see the following websites, which

include links to pages with more information for prospective students: ICS

homepage: http://www.louisiana.edu/Research/ICS/

Laboratory of Comparative Neuroscience homepage:

http://www.ucs.louisiana.edu/~tmp8292/neuroscience/

Or contact: Dr. Todd M. Preuss University of Louisiana at Lafayette

Institute of Cognitive Science Cognitive Evolution Group 4401 W. Admiral

Doyle Drive New Iberia, LA 70560

Phone: 337-482-0261;Email: tmp8292@louisiana.edu

Facts of Life Conference. January 26-27, 2000 in Houston, Texas. This

conference introduces research from the natural sciences and from the study

of family systems to a broad audience interested in applications to health

and human society. This year will feature John Allman, who will discuss "

Evolution of Brains and Parenting" and Michael Kerr, who will discuss

"Natural Systems Theory of the Family." For brochure or registration

information, please contact: Victoria Harrison at 713-790-0226 or

Vichar@worldnet.att.net

NEWS ABOUT HBES'S JOURNAL, EVOLUTION & HUMAN BEHAVIOR

FROM MARTIN DALY AND MARGO WILSON

Sorry we got four months behind. The "July" issue wasn't mailed out to

subscribers until November 1st, but the "September" issue is also going out

in November, and the "November" issue has been printed, so we should be

caught back up to schedule before the new millennium!

This year's final issue (volume 20, # 6) is a thematically focused one on a

topic close to our hearts: "Step-parental Investment." This special issue

originated from a symposium session at HBES97 at the University of Arizona.

With papers by anthropologists, biologists and psychologists, it extends

evolution-minded analysis of step-relationships beyond the relatively rare

and extreme negative outcomes of child abuse and murder to document the

magnitude, determinants and consequences of step-parental investment in a

range of societies.

We are very pleased that submissions have taken a quantum leap this year. We

surpassed the previous record for manuscripts submitted to the journal in a

calendar year on August 18, 1999, and the steady flow of papers continues.

This bodes well, both for our staying on schedule in the future and for the

growth of our journal. In the year 2000, E&HB will publish a set of papers

in which anthropologists apply "costly signaling theory" to the explanation

of seemingly unprofitable or irrational behaviors in traditional societies.

Also in press are a paper presenting evidence for musical ability as an

honest signal of male fitness; a paper reporting that women's preferences

for male faces change over the course of the menstrual cycle; a paper

suggesting that our facial expressions give away our "private" thoughts; and

papers on altruist detection, the resemblances of newborn babies, and

grandparental investment in Germany and Greece. And we're sure that our

readers will enjoy an historian's analysis of "the jus primae noctis as a

male power display".

We wish to thank the many people who have generously reviewed manuscripts

for E&HB. The caliber of the journal depends so much on their efforts and

expertise.

The future of E & HB is rosy, but we still need your help. Please advise us

of new and forthcoming books that should be reviewed for HBES'ers. Make sure

that your colleagues who are not yet members of HBES know what they are

missing. And think about E&HB's growing status when you're thinking about

where to submit your best work!

Martin Daly & Margo Wilson, Department of Psychology; McMaster University,

Hamilton, Ontario, Canada L8S 4K1;

Email: EHB-eds@McMaster.CA

BOOK ANNOUNCEMENTS

Buss, David M. (January, 2000). The Dangerous Passion: Why Jealousy is as

Necessary as Love and Sex. New York: Free Press.

Carstairs-McCarthy, Andrew (April, 2000). The Origins of Complex Language:

An Inquiry into the Evolutionary Origins of Sentences, Syllables and Truth.

Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Cronk, Lee. 1999. That Complex Whole: Culture and the Evolution of Behavior.

Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

Cronk, Lee, & Vaughn M. Bryant, (Eds.) (2000). Through the Looking Glass:

Readings in General Anthropology, 2ed. New York: McGraw Hill.

Ellis, Lee, & Anthony Walsh (January, 2000). Global Criminology: An

Introduction to the Study of Criminal/Antisocial Behavior. Boston: Allyn &

Bacon.

Entine, John (January, 2000). Taboo: Why Black Athletes Dominate Sports and

Why We Are Afraid to Talk About It. New York: Public Affairs.

Gintis, Herbert (July, 2000). Game Theory Evolving: A Problem-Centered

Introduction to Modeling Strategic Interaction. Princeton, NJ: Princeton

University Press

Hrdy, Sarah B. (1999). Mother Nature: A History of Mothers, Infants, and

Natural Selection. New York: Pantheon.

LaFreniere, P. J. (2000). Emotional Development: A Biosocial Perspective.

Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. (Now available.)

Lopreato, Joseph, & Timothy Crippen (1999). Crisis in Sociology: The Need

for Darwin. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers.

Low, Bobbi S. (January, 2000). Why Sex Matters: A Darwinian Look at Human

Behavior. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Mealey, Linda (January, 2000). Sex Differences: Developmental and

Evolutionary Strategies. San Diego: Academic Press.

Rushton, J. Philippe (1999). Race, Evolution, and Behavior, Special Abridged

Edition. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction.

Segal, Nancy (1999). Entwined Lives: Twins and What They Tell Us About Human

Behavior. New York: Dutton.

Shermer, Michael (1999). How We Believe: The Search for God in an Age of

Science. New York: W. H. Freeman and Company.

Shermer, Michael (March, 2000). Denying History: Who Says the Holocaust

Never Happened and Why do They Say It? (with Alex Grobman). Berkeley:

University of California Press.

Tennov, Dorothy (1999). Love and Limerence: The Experience of Being in Love.

First published by Stein and Day in 1979; reissued in 1999 by Scarborough

House.

Thornhill, Randy, & Craig T. Palmer (March, 2000). A Natural History of

Rape:

Biological Bases of Sexual Coercion. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Weisfeld, G. (1999). Evolutionary Principles of Adolescence. New York: Basic

Books.

Wright, Robert (January, 2000). Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny. New

York: Pantheon.

SUBSCRIPTION TO THE JOURNAL, HUMAN NATURE, BY HBES MEMBERS

Special subscription offer. The publisher Aldine de Gruyter offers HBES

members a special reduced subscription rate to the journal Human Nature,

edited by Jane Lancaster. The normal subscription rate is $85 per year , but

HBES members may subscribe for $50 year.

Scope and mission. The journal Human Nature is dedicated to advancing the

interdisciplinary study of human social behavior. It features overviews and

statements of evolutionary interpretation and research, and it focuses on

the ways in which biological, social and environmental factors influence and

are influenced by human behavior. It includes investigations of :

biological, ecological and demographic conditions and consequences of human

history; psychological and cognitive processes; cross-cultural,

cross-species, and historical perspectives on human behavior; and the

relevance of evolutionary perspectives to scientific, social and policy

issues. It also includes news briefs about relevant recent conferences and

research reports.

To subscribe, contact: Aldine de Gruyter; Human Nature Subscriptions; 200

Saw Mill River Road; Hawthorne, NY 10532; Further information: Aldine de

Gruyter (914) 747-0110 x14; Fax: (914) 747-1326; Email:

<degruyter.ny@worldnet.att.net>

The Human Behavior & Evolution Society

The Human Behavior & Evolution Society (HBES) was formed in 1988 to promote

the exchange of ideas and research findings among scholars of all

disciplines who are using modern evolutionary theory in their studies of

human behavior. An invitation to join the society is extended to all who

share its aims.

HBES is a highly eclectic group, consisting of scholars from many fields,

including psychology, anthropology, psychiatry, economics, medicine,

philosophy, literature, biology, sociology, artificial intelligence, art,

law and political science. Our membership is world-wide.

Most of us are professional academics, but approximately 20% of us are

students. In order to encourage student scholarship, special awards are

granted at our annual meetings for the best pre and post-doctoral papers. To

finance these awards and other student activities, members are encouraged to

donate to the HBES Student Fund. Every little bit helps.

Members receive:

(News of the Society; (Subscription to our journal, Evolution & Human

Behavior; (Membership Directory;(HBES-L Electronic Bulletin; (Meeting

Announcements; ( Reduced subscription rate for Human Nature;(Reduced Meeting