Beware of false prophets: Biology, human nature and the future of International Relations theory

International Affairs

Volumn 82, Issue 3, 2006, Pages 493-510

  Bell, Duncan ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 33646736398     PISSN: 00205850     EISSN: 14682346     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-2346.2006.00547.x     Document Type: Review

References (165)

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3. Yale Ferguson and Richard Mansbach, The elusive quest: theory and international politics (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1988).
4. See also Colin Wight, 'The philosophy of social science and international relations', in Walter Carlsnaes, Thomas Risse and Beth Simulons, eds, Handbook of international relations (London: Sage, 2002), pp. 23-52.
5. It was partly the adoption by biologists of many of the mathematical techniques originally developed in physics that helped elevate biology to its current scientific and cultural pre-eminence, but that is another story.
6. A point also noted in N. J. Rengger, International relations, political theory, and the problem of order (London: Routledge, 2000), pp. 194-6.
7. Jacob Heilbron, 'Social thought and natural science',
8. and Dorothy Ross, 'Changing contours of the social science disciplines', in Theodore Porter and Dorothy Ross, eds, The Cambridge history of science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), vol. 7, pp. 40-55, 205-38.
9. For a good overview, see Daniel Pick, 'The politics of nature: science and religion in the age of Darwin', in Gregory Claeys and Gareth Stedman Jones, eds, The Cambridge history of nineteenth century political thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).
10. John Burrow, Evolution and society: a study in Victorian social theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966);
11. Peter Bowler, Evolution; the history of an idea, 3rd edn (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003).
12. Mike Hawkins, Social Darwinism in European and American thought, 1860-1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997);
13. Gregory Claeys, 'The "survival of the fittest" and the origins of social Darwinism', Journal of the History of Ideas 61: 2, 2000, pp. 223-40.
14. On 'peace biology' see Paul Crook, Darwinism, war and history: the debate over the biology of war from the 'Origin of Species' to the First World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994).
15. Paul Josephson, 'Science, ideology and the state: physics in the twentieth century', in Mary Jo Nye, ed., The Cambridge history of science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), vol. 5, pp. 579-98, esp. 89-97;
16. Peter Galison and Bruce Hevly, eds, Big science: the growth of large-scale research (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1992).
17. For an interesting illustration of this transition, see James Gleick, Genius: Richard Feynman and modern physics (New York: Pantheon, 1992), esp. chs 2-4.
18. Laura Garrett, 'The nightmare of bioterrorism', Foreign Affairs, Jan./Feb. 2001,
19. quoted in Joanna Bourke, Fear: a cultural history (London: Virago, 2005), p. 370.
20. Andrew Brown, The Darwin wars: how selfish genes became stupid gods (London: Simon & Schuster, 1999), p. 21.
21. Dorothy Nelkin and M. Susan Lindee, The DNA mystique; the gene as a cultural icon (New York: W. H. Freeman, 1995), pp. 2, vii.
22. Daniel Dennett, Darwin's dangerous idea: evolution and the meaning of life (London: Simon & Schuster, 1995), pp. 19, 82.
23. Nelkin and Lindee, The DNA mystique, p. 40.
24. Joseph Lepreato and Timothy Crippen, Crisis in sociology: the need for Darwin (New York: Transaction, 1999), p. 131.
25. For a flavour of this range, see Alexander Rosenberg, Darwinism in philosophy, social science and policy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000);
26. Graham. Sewell, 'Yabba-dabba-dool Evolutionary psychology and the rise of Flintstone psychological thinking in organization and management studies', Human Relations 57: 8, 2004, pp. 923-57;
27. 3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=892881, last accessed March 2006.
28. On his multidisciplinary impact, see Alan Grafen and Matt Ridley, eds, Richard Dawkins: how a scientist changed the way we think (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).
29. This is especially the case in a university system under attack by various conservative and religious organizations. See Joan Scott, 'Middle East studies under siege', The Link 39: 1, 2006.
30. 'Interview with David Harvey', New Left Review, July/Aug. 2000, p. 81.
31. George Modelski and Kazimierz Poznanski, eds, 'Evolutionary paradigms in the social sciences', International Studies Quarterly 40: 3, 1996, pp. 315-433.
32. Some of the possibilities and problems with cultural and historical evolutionary models are elaborated in 'The return of science: evolutionary idea's and history', eds, D. Gary Shaw and Philip Pomper, History and Theory 38:4, 1999,
33. and debated by Joseph Fraccia, Richard Lewontin and W. G. Runciman, 'Forum: does culture evolve?', History and Theory 44: 1, 2005, pp. 1-42.
34. Steven Bernstein, Richard Ned Lebow, Jauice Gross Stein and Steven Weber, 'God gave physics the easy problems: adapting social science to an unpredictable world', European Journal of International Relations 6:1, 2000, pp. 44, 53, 50.
35. David Byrne, Complexity theory and the social sciences: an introduction (London: Routledge, 1998);
36. Paul Cilliers, Complexity and postmodernism: understanding complex systems (London: Routledge, 1998);
37. John Urry, Global complexity (Cambridge: Polity, 2002).
38. Lars-Erik Cederman, Emergent actors in world politics: how states and nations develop and dissolve (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997);
39. Robert Jervis, System effects: complexity in political and social life (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997);
40. and James Rosenau, Distant proximities: dynamics beyond globalization (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003).
41. James Rosenau, 'Many damn things simultaneously: complexity theory and world politics', in David Alberts and Thomas Czerwinski, eds, Complexity theory, global politics, and national security (Washington DC: National Defense University, 1997), pp. 3-4.
42. Alexander Wendt, 'Why a world state is Inevitable: teleology and the logic of anarchy', European Journal of International Relations 9: 4, 2003, pp. 491-542.
43. Kauffman, At home in the universe: the search for laws of complexity (London: Viking, 1995), p. 298.
44. Jerorne H. Barkow, Leda Cosmides and John Tooby, eds, The adapted mind: evolutionary psychology and the generation of culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992).
45. See also David Buss, ed., The handbook of evolutionary psychology (New York: Wiley, 2005);
46. Lance Workman and Will Reader, Evolutionary psychology: an introduction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).
47. Alternative approaches are examined in Kevin N. Laland and Gillian R. Brown; Sense and nonsense: evolutionary perspectives on human behaviour (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).
48. On sociobiology, see Ullicia Segerstråle, Beyond the science wars: the missing discourse about science and society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000);
49. Richard Lewontin, The doctrine of DNA: biology as ideology (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1993).
50. For the links between EP and sociobiology, see John Dupré, Human nature and the limits of science (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001),
51. and, from a different angle, John Alcock, The triumph of sociobiology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).
52. The link is denied in Richard Dawkins, 'Afterword' In Buss, ed., The handbook of evolutionary psychology, p. 975.
53. David Buss, 'Introduction', in Buss, ed., The handbook of evolutionary psychology, p. xxiv.
54. See also Buss, Evolutionary psychology: the new science of the mind (London: Allyn & Bacon, 1999), p. xix.
55. Leda Cosmides and John Tooby, 'Better than rational: evolutionary psychology and the invisible hand', American Economic Review 84, 1994, p. 328.
56. This challenges Rengger, International relations, pp. 195-6.
57. Buss, 'Introduction', p. xiv.
58. Dupré, Human nature, pp. 25-6.
59. Simon Blackburn, 'Meet the Flintstones', The New Republic (2002), http://www.phil.cam.ac.uk/~swb24/reviews/reviews.html, accessed Jan. 2006.
60. See also Dupré, Human nature, pp. 39-40.
61. Cosmides and Tooby, 'Better than rational', p. 329.
62. Michael Freeden, 'Eugenics and progressive thought: a study in ideological affinity', in Liberal languages: ideological imaginations and twentieth-century progressive thought (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), pp. 144-73.
63. And they still do: Nicholas Agar, Liberal eugenics: in defence of human enhancement (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004).
64. Dawkins, 'Afterword', pp. 977-8.
65. Richard Lewontin, 'Of genes and genitals', Transition 69, 1996, p. 180.
66. On the rhetoric and exaggerations of EP, see David Buller, Adapting minds: evolutionary psychology and the persistent quest for human nature (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005), pp. 5-6;
67. Patrick Bateson, 'The origins of human differences', Daedalus, Fall 2004, p. 37.
68. Richard Rorty, 'Philosophy-envy', Daedalus, Fall 2004., p. 20.
69. For Pinker's usage, see his 'Why nature and nurture won't go away', Daedalus, Fall 2004, p. 5.
70. See also John Dupré, 'On scientific imperialism', Philosophy of Science Association Proceedings 2, 1994, pp. 374-81.
71. R. Paul Shaw and Yuwa Wong, 'Ethnic mobilization and the seeds of warfare: an evolutionary perspective', International Studies Quarterly 31: 1, 1987, pp. 5-31,
72. and the ensuing debate. See, in general, the regular editions of the journal Politics and the Life Sciences, http://www.politicsandthelifesciences. org/, last accessed April 2006.
73. Duncan Snidal, 'Rational choice and international relations', in Carlsnaes et al., eds, Handbook of international relations, pp. 73-95.
74. Cf. Donald Green and Ian Shapiro, Pathologies of rational choice theory (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994);
75. Ian Shapiro, The flight from reality in the human sciences (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), ch. 2.
76. Cosmides and Tooby, 'Better than rational', p. 328.
77. Cf. Dupré, Human nature, esp. ch. 6.
78. Cf. Donald Green and Ian Shapiro, Pathologies of rational choice theory (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994);
79. and Ian Shapiro, The flight from reality in the human sciences (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), ch, 2.
80. Kenneth Waltz, Man, the state, and war: a theoretical analysis (New York; Columbia University Press, 1959).
81. Francis Fukuyama, 'Women and the evolution of world politics', Foreign Affairs 77: 5, 1998, pp. 25, 27.
82. Fukuyama, 'Women and the evolution of world politics', pp. 36, 40.
83. See also the comments on this pattern by two leading biologists: Frans De Waal, Our inner ape (London: Granta, 2005), esp. ch. 1;
84. and Lewontin, The doctrine of DNA, ch. 1.
85. R. Brian Ferguson, 'Perilous positions', Foreign Affairs 78: 1, 1999, p. 126.
86. See also Barbara Ehrenreich et al., 'Fukuyatna's follies', Foreign Affairs 78: 1, 1999, pp. 118-29;
87. J. Ann Tickner, 'Why women can't run the world: international politics according to Francis Fukuyama', International Studies Review 1: 3, 1999, pp. 3-11.
88. Joshua Goldstein, War and gender: how gender shapes the war system and vice versa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 403-14.
89. J. Philippe Rushton, 'Ethnic nationalism, evolutionary psychology and generic similarity theory', Nations and Nationalism 11: 4, 2005, pp. 490, 504.
90. See also Jim Sidanius and Robert Kurzban, 'Evolutionary approaches to political psychology', in David O. Sears, Lconic Huddy and Robert Jervis, eds, Handbook of political psychology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 146-82;
91. and Bradley Thayer, Darwin and international relations: on the evolutionary origins of war and ethnic conflict (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2004).
92. Rushton, 'Ethnic nationalism', pp. 501, 503.
93. For a devastating critique of Rushton's earlier work on race, see Lewontin, 'Of genes and genitals'
94. . 53 Deepak Lal, 'Globalisation, imperialism and reguktion', Cambridge Review of International Affairs 14: 1, 2000, pp. 112, 118-19.
95. Stephen Peter Rosen, War and human nature (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004), p. 7.
96. For a stimulating account of how alternative work in neuroscience would be incorporated into political theory, see William Connolly, Neuropolitics: thinking, culture, speeed (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002).
97. Rosen, War and human nature, p. 5.
98. Kenneth Binmore, Natural justice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005);
99. and the symposium on his work in Politics, Philosophy, and Economics 5: 1, 2006.
100. See also John Riwls, A theory of justice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971).
101. Peter Singer, A Darwinian left: politics, evolution, and cooperation (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1999);
102. One world: the ethics of globalization (London: Yale University Press, 2002), pp. 160-3.
103. For a critique of this position, see Tim Lewens, Darwin (London: Routledge, forthcoming 2007), ch. 8.
104. See also Peter Singer, The expanding circle: ethics and socioliology (Oxford: Clarendon, 1981);
105. 'Ethics and intuitions', Journal of Ethics 9: 3, pp. 331-52.
106. Tim Lewens, 'Prospects for evolutionary policy', Philosophy 78: 4, 2003, p. 495.
107. Lewontin, The doctrine of DNA, p. 8.
108. On 'developmental systems theory', see Dupré, Human nature;
109. Lewens, 'Prospects for evolutionary policy'.
110. Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, The bell curve: intelligence and class structure in American life (New York: Free Press, 1994);
111. Steven Fraser, ed., The bell curve wars: race, intelligence, and the future of America (New York: Basic Books, 1995).
112. Diane Paul, 'Darwin, social Darwinism, and eugenics', in Jonathan Hodge and Gregory Radick, eds, The Cambridge companion to Darwin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 237.
113. Rosen, War and human nature, p. 10.
114. Sidanius and Kurzban, 'Evolutionary approaches to political psychology', pp. 187-8.
115. For criticisms of this rendering of the 'fallacy', see Dupré, Human nature, pp. 87-90;
116. Sewell, 'Yabba-dabba-doo', pp. 932-40.
117. John Dupré, 'What the theory of evolution can't tell us', in Humans and other animals (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 201;
118. Human nature, p. 89.
119. Paul, 'Darwin, social Darwinism, and eugenics', pp. 218-33;
120. Lewens, Darwin, ch. 8.
121. Paul, 'Darwin, social Darwinism, and eugenics', .p. 237.
122. Hubbard, 'Race and genes'.
123. The other essays from this forum, organized by the Social Science Research Council, Indicate many of the other pernicious social consequences of such arguments. See also Jonathan Kaplan, The limits and lies of human genetic research: dangers fir social policy (London: Routledge, 2000).
124. See e.g. Philip Kitcher, Science, truth, and democracy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001);
125. Steve Fuller, The governance of science: ideology and thefuture of the open society (Buckingham: Open University Press, 2000).
126. For some of the relevant issues, see the article by Amanda Dickins in this issue of International Affairs.
127. Hilary Rose and Stephen Rose, eds, Alas, poor Darwin: arguments against evolutionary psychology (London: Jonathan Cape, 2000),
128. esp. essays by Stephen Jay Gould, Gabriel Dover, Patrick Bateson and Annette Karmiloff-Smith. See also Bateson, 'The origins of human differences'.
129. Jerry Coyne, 'Of vice and men: the fairy tales of evolutionary psychology', New Republic, 3 April 2000, p. 34.
130. See also Jerry Coyne, 'Rape as an adaptation', Nature 404, 2002, pp. 121-2.
131. Stephen Jay Gould, 'Evolution: the pleasures of pluralism', New York Review of Books 44: 11, 1997, pp. 47-52.
132. Dupré, Human nature;
133. and "What evolutionary theory can't tell us';
134. Buller, Adapting minds,
135. Philip Kitcher, Vaulting ambition: sociobiology and the quest for human nature (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1988)
136. and Lewontin, The doctrine of DNA, are still very useful.
137. Dupré, Human nature;
138. Lewens, 'Prospects for evolutionary theory'.
139. For alternative accounts of genetics, see Michel Morange, The misunderstood gene (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002);
140. Richard Lewontin, The triple helix: gene, organism, and environment (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000);
141. Steven Rose, Lifelines: biology, freedom, determinism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997).
142. Elizabeth Lloyd, 'Evolutionary psychology: the burdens of proof', Biology and Philosophy 14, 1999, p. 213.
143. See also M. E. Feldman and Elizabeth Lloyd, 'Evolutionary psychology: a view from evolutionary biology', Psychological Inquiry 13: 2, 2002, pp. 150-6.
144. Jerry Foder, The mind doesn't work that way; the scope and limits of computational psychology (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001), p. 56.
145. See also Buller, Adapting minds, ch. 4;
146. Richard Samuels, 'Evolutionary psychology and the massive modularity hypothesis', British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 49, 1998, pp. 575-602.
147. Buller, Adapting minds, pp. 15, 481.
148. See e.g. David Buller's critique of Buss (Adapting minds, ch. 8);
149. Lewens's discussion of Buss, Daly and Wilson in The prospects for evolutionary policy', pp. 505-13;
150. Lloyd, 'Evolutionary psychology';
151. and Dupré, 'What the theory of evolution can't tell us',
152. Dupré, Human nature, p. 64;
153. 'What the theory of evolution can't tell us', pp. 207-8.
154. See also R. Brian Ferguson, 'Materialist, cultural and biological theories on why Yanomami make war', Anthropological Theory 1: 1, 2001, pp. 99-116.
155. H. Looren de Jong and W. J. Van Der Steen, 'Biological thinking in evolutionary psychology: rock-bottom or quick-sand', Philosophical Psychology 11: 2, 1998, pp. 183-205.
156. Buller, Adapting minds, pp. 94ff.;
157. Dupré, Human nature, pp. 42-3.
158. See also Jonathan Michael Kaplan, 'Historical evidence and human adaptations', Philosophy of Science 69, 2002, pp. 294-304;
159. Leweris, 'Prospects for evolutionary theory', pp. 504-5.
160. De Waal, Our inner ape, esp. ch. 1;
161. Buller, Adapting minds, pp. 95-6.
162. On the long and illuminating history of using primates to model human nature, see Donna Haraway, Primate visions: gender, race, and the nature of modern science (London: Routledge, 1989).
163. Robert Sapolsky, 'A natural history of peace', Foreign Affairs 85: 1, 2006, pp. 104-20.
164. Buller, Adapting minds, pp. 15, 481. Buller's book systematically demolishes much of the evidence evolutionary psychologists present as their most significant findings.
165. Bernard Williams, 'The liberalism of fear', in In the beginning was the deed: realism and maralism in political argument, ed. Geoffrey Hawthorn (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005, p. 52.