Science & Nature: `No One Working in the Social Sciences Can Ignore the Role of Our Genetic Inheritance'

Beginning of article

I recently had lunch with John Tooby and Leda Cosmides of the University of California at Santa Barbara. They have become famous for their contributions to evolutionary psychology, and have revolutionised thinking in the social sciences by introducing new concepts as to how one should think about culture. In the older, standard concept of the social sciences, people were born with a mind that was in effect a blank slate, which then became filled in by culture. Tooby and Cosmides have largely made such models obsolete.

When still at school, Cosmides wanted to know what were good ways for people to live happily and without conflict. She realised that to answer her …