Sociobiology and Evolutionary Psychology: Darwinism and Dogma

This article converses evolutionary approaches to the study of human minds. Individual are evolved organisms. Thus, studying the evolutionary process helps us to understand human behavior. This assumes that a mechanistic explanation of every aspect of human behavior is possible and human minds are collections of apparatus. These apparatus are supposed to be physically implemented. It is indicated in this article that in the relationship between the mind of current humans and the evolutionary process, evolution has generated only a small set of basic innate mental abilities in humans. According to Wilson much human actions are genetic adaptations and environmental variation affects behavioural adaptations. According to Tooby and Cosmides psychosomatic apparatus produce different behavioural outputs in response to different inputs from experience. Thus even if there are some behavioural differences between populations that have an inherited origin, most of the variation is at the population level.