Napoleon Chagnon and Robert Ardrey
History. You don’t know the half of it. Not, at least, unless you have the time and patience to do a little serious digging through the source material on your own. A good percentage of the so...
View ArticleNapoleon Chagnon’s “Noble Savages”– The Life of an Anthropological Heretic
Supposedly Otto von Bismarck once said, “Laws are like sausages. It is better not to see them being made.” The same could as well be said of science. However, for those who insist on watching the...
View ArticleOn the Origins of Morality
In his book, The Territorial Imperative, that greatest and most ignored of “evolutionary psychologists,” Robert Ardrey, wrote, To account for man’s undoubted moral nature, a variety of suppositions...
View ArticleRobert Ardrey: Incidents in the Disappearance of an Unperson
Who was Robert Ardrey? He was the most important, eloquent, and influential opponent of what is now referred to as the Blank Slate orthodoxy. You don’t have to take my word for it. The fact is...
View ArticleScientific American Notices Human Nature
And speaking of Robert Ardrey, what more striking vindication of his contention that there actually is such a thing as human nature could there be than recognition of that very fact by the relentlessly...
View ArticleAnother Episode in the Adventures of Group Selection
In this episode, Martin Nowak pokes yet another stick into the inclusive fitness hornet’s nest with his answer to the question of the year over at Edge.org. The question is, “What scientific idea is...
View ArticleIngroups and Outgroups: The Ukraine Data Stream
The notion that the suite of behavioral traits we associate with morality is dual in nature goes back at least a century. It was first formalized back in the 40′s by Sir Arthur Keith, who wrote, Human...
View ArticleA Fly in the “Human Flourishing” Soup: An Australian Data Point
One of the favorite hobbies of secular philosophers of late has been the fabrication of new and improved systems of morality. Perhaps the best known example is outlined in Sam Harris’ The Moral...
View Article“Grounds of War”– A New Paper on Territoriality with Remarkable...
Robert Ardrey was a brilliant man. After a successful career as a playwright, he became an anthropologist, and wrote a series of four books in the 60′s and 70′s refuting the absurd orthodoxy of the...
View Article“Utterly Wrong” Robert Ardrey Vindicated Again. “Scientific American”...
The dubious claim that early man never engaged in anything so politically incorrect as hunting was part and parcel of the Blank Slate. In fact, you can almost date its collapse from the time that...
View ArticleMassimo Pigliucci on Hume and Human Nature
Massimo Pigliucci recently posted an article at his Scientia Salon website exploring the connection between the philosophy of David Hume and the concept of human nature. Entitled Human Nature, a...
View Article“On Aggression” and the Continuing Vindication of the Unpersons
The vindication just keeps coming for the unpersons of the Blank Slate. First Robert Ardrey’s “Territorial Imperative” is confirmed in an article in the journal International Security. The authors...
View ArticleTroublesome Nick and the Timid Echoes of the Blank Slate
You can still get in trouble for saying things that are true, or, for that matter, even obvious. Consider, for example, Nicholas Wade’s A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race and Human History. I...
View ArticleNature vs. Nurture at the Movies: Hollywood Turns on the Blank Slate
If Hollywood is any guide, we can put a fork in the Blank Slate. I refer, of course, to the delusional orthodoxy that was enforced by the “Men of Science” in the behavioral sciences for more than half...
View ArticleFrans de Waal’s “The Bonobo and the Atheist”: The Objective Morality of a...
Franz de Waal’s The Bonobo and the Atheist is interesting for several reasons. As the title of this post suggests, it demonstrates the disconnect between the theory and practice of morality in the...
View ArticleOn the Continuing Adventures of the “Killer Ape Theory” Zombie
An article entitled “The Evolution of War – A User’s Guide,” recently turned up at “This View of Life,” a website hosted by David Sloan Wilson. Written by Anthony Lopez, it is one of the more...
View ArticleWhat Made the “blank slate” the Blank Slate?
The Blank Slate affair was probably the greatest scientific debacle in history. For half a century, give or take, an enforced orthodoxy prevailed in the behavioral sciences, promoting the dogma that...
View ArticleStephen Hawking Chimes in “On Aggression”
Tell me, dear reader, have you ever heard the term, “On Aggression” before? As it happens, that was actually the title of a book by Konrad Lorenz published in 1966, at the height of the Blank Slate...
View ArticleFaith versus Fact: New Atheism Rejects the Blank Slate
Jerry Coyne just launched another New Atheist salvo against the Defenders of the Faith in the form of his latest book, Faith versus Fact. It’s well written and well reasoned, effectively squashing the...
View ArticleHistorical Artifacts of the Blank Slate
James Boswell, who wrote the famous biography of Dr. Johnson, recounts in his journal a conversation with a man who trusted nothing about history except the mere occurrence of such widely witnessed and...
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