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Why We Do It
Why do people have sex? Is it solely for the purpose of passing on genetic information, or are there other reasons? "A candid, no-punches-pulled interpreter of the core ideas of evolutionary biology" (Science News), author Niles Eldredge unravels the origins of our coital instincts. Whereas other scientists dismiss human sexuality as a helpless response to the same deep-set biological imperatives that govern the behavior of lesser animals, Eldredge points to various examples of customs, taboos, laws, and other cultural forces that run counter to our most primal desires. Directly assaulting the reductionist "selfish gene" theory, whereby sex is reduced to a purely procreative act, Eldredge draws on Darwin's ideas about evolution as well as modern economic theory to describe the delicate cultural and societal interaction that exists between survival, sex, and procreation in the human species.
269 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2004
8 people are currently reading
178 people want to read
About the author
Niles Eldredge
51 books26 followersNiles Eldredge (born August 25, 1943) is an American biologist and paleontologist, who, along with Stephen Jay Gould, proposed the theory of punctuated equilibrium in 1972.
Eldredge began his undergraduate studies in Latin at Columbia University. Before completing his degree he switched to the study of anthropology under Norman D. Newell. It was at this time that his work at the American Museum of Natural History began, under the combined Columbia University-American Museum graduate studies program.
Eldredge graduated summa cum laude from Columbia College of Columbia University in 1965, and enrolled in the university's doctoral program while continuing his research at the museum. He completed his PhD in 1969.
In 1969, Eldredge became a curator in the Department of Invertebrates at the American Museum of Natural History, and subsequently a curator in the Invertebrate Paleontology section of Paleontology, a position from which he recently retired. He was also an Adjunct Professor at the City University of New York. His specialty was the evolution of mid-Paleozoic Phacopida trilobites: a group of extinct arthropods that lived between 543 and 245 million years ago.
Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould proposed punctuated equilibria in 1972. Punctuated equilibrium is a refinement to evolutionary theory. It describes patterns of descent taking place in "fits and starts" separated by long periods of stability.
Eldredge went on to develop a hierarchical vision of evolutionary and ecological systems. Around this time, he became focused on the rapid destruction of many of the world's habitats and species.
Throughout his career, he has used repeated patterns in the history of life to refine ideas on how the evolutionary process actually works. Eldredge is proponent of the importance of environment in explaining the patterns in evolution.
Eldredge is a critic of the gene-centric view of evolution. His most recent venture is the development of an alternative account to the gene-based notions of evolutionary psychology to explain human behavior.
He has published more than 160 scientific articles, books, and reviews, including Reinventing Darwin, an examination of current controversies in evolutionary biology, and Dominion, a consideration of the ecological and evolutionary past, present, and future of Homo sapiens.
Eldredge enjoys playing jazz trumpet and is an avid collector of 19th century cornets. He shares his home in Ridgewood, New Jersey with his wife and more than 500 cornets. He also has two sons, two daughters-in-law, and five grandchildren.
Eldredge possesses a chart of the historical development of cornets (the musical instruments), which he uses as a comparison with that of the development of trilobites. The differences between them are meant to highlight the failures of intelligent design by comparing a system that is definitely designed, with a system that is not designed.
Eldredge began his undergraduate studies in Latin at Columbia University. Before completing his degree he switched to the study of anthropology under Norman D. Newell. It was at this time that his work at the American Museum of Natural History began, under the combined Columbia University-American Museum graduate studies program.
Eldredge graduated summa cum laude from Columbia College of Columbia University in 1965, and enrolled in the university's doctoral program while continuing his research at the museum. He completed his PhD in 1969.
In 1969, Eldredge became a curator in the Department of Invertebrates at the American Museum of Natural History, and subsequently a curator in the Invertebrate Paleontology section of Paleontology, a position from which he recently retired. He was also an Adjunct Professor at the City University of New York. His specialty was the evolution of mid-Paleozoic Phacopida trilobites: a group of extinct arthropods that lived between 543 and 245 million years ago.
Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould proposed punctuated equilibria in 1972. Punctuated equilibrium is a refinement to evolutionary theory. It describes patterns of descent taking place in "fits and starts" separated by long periods of stability.
Eldredge went on to develop a hierarchical vision of evolutionary and ecological systems. Around this time, he became focused on the rapid destruction of many of the world's habitats and species.
Throughout his career, he has used repeated patterns in the history of life to refine ideas on how the evolutionary process actually works. Eldredge is proponent of the importance of environment in explaining the patterns in evolution.
Eldredge is a critic of the gene-centric view of evolution. His most recent venture is the development of an alternative account to the gene-based notions of evolutionary psychology to explain human behavior.
He has published more than 160 scientific articles, books, and reviews, including Reinventing Darwin, an examination of current controversies in evolutionary biology, and Dominion, a consideration of the ecological and evolutionary past, present, and future of Homo sapiens.
Eldredge enjoys playing jazz trumpet and is an avid collector of 19th century cornets. He shares his home in Ridgewood, New Jersey with his wife and more than 500 cornets. He also has two sons, two daughters-in-law, and five grandchildren.
Eldredge possesses a chart of the historical development of cornets (the musical instruments), which he uses as a comparison with that of the development of trilobites. The differences between them are meant to highlight the failures of intelligent design by comparing a system that is definitely designed, with a system that is not designed.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
July 24, 2019
An emotional response to evolutionary psychology
This is an attack on what Eldredge calls "ultra-Darwinism" and what he imagines is "selfish gene biology." The main problem in the first instance is that no such animal as "ultra-Darwinism" exists (it's just a slur); and in the second he is tilting against the windmill of a metaphor.
Richard Dawkins, celebrated author of The Selfish Gene (1976), is well aware that genes are not "selfish" in a literal sense. Furthermore, nearly everybody knows that genes work in concert with the environment to shape our biology and our behavior. Indeed, there is nary an evolutionary biologist outside of Bob Jones University who thinks that some kind of endowment, fixed or otherwise, is the exclusive determinate of who we are.
But Eldredge seems unaware of the modern understanding. Not only is he tilting at windmills, he is setting up and trying to knock down straw men that don't exist. Let's look at some of his accusations.
He wants us to know that the drive to eat and stay alive is more fundamental that the drive to reproduce. He calls this the primacy of economics over sex. This is fine, but I know of no evolutionary biologist, anthropologist or sociobiologist who thinks otherwise. They do not mistake the blueprint for the building. Of course in the mass culture a simplistic imbibing of Darwinism and a literal grokking of the metaphor of the selfish gene does exist. It is therefore perhaps a shame that some of this book does not appear in say People magazine to set the general public straight.
Eldredge notes that reproduction is NOT the purpose of life and posits the existential view that if life has a purpose "it is simply to live." (p. 46) But "purpose" is entirely an anthropomorphic notion and has no place in evolutionary biological thinking..
He wants to emphasize the cooperative nature of organisms as opposed to the idea that nature is competitive. He writes that "overt, no-holds-barred competition in the mating arena is, in the last analysis, relatively rare." And then on the very same page (66) he more or less contradicts himself by writing that male birds "stake out a territory (usually constantly defended against intruding males)..." Note that even using such ideas as "defended" ushers us into the land of metaphor. The birds actually react instinctively to the close proximity of other males and try to chase them away. We think they are "defending territory."
Eldredge is saying that the males are not fighting over females or sex but are holding onto valuable real estate--that is, their behavior is economic and not sexual. In a nut shell this is his point: life is lived primarily as an economic venture. What counts is getting enough to eat while avoiding life's many pitfalls. He believes it is a mistake to go further and add that the purpose of these behaviors is to reproduce. Again the bugaboo here is that word "purpose." The truth is that all organisms once they have secured the necessities of life try to reproduce. This is not the same thing as saying that is their "purpose."
What I especially dislike however is not Eldredge's insistence on what should be obvious, but the surly manner in which he attempts to dismiss certain of his colleagues and his attempt to ridicule ideas he either doesn't understand or thinks are being applied too broadly. His dismissive labeling--"hard-core evolutionary genetics," p. 130; E. O. Wilson's "consilience gambit" (why is it a "gambit"?) p. 249, "ultra-Darwinism," etc.--cannot stand for cogent argument. Particularly offensive is his repetition of what he calls "the Pleistocene cop-out." His argument here is that evolutionary psychologists explain current human behavior in terms of what worked on the savannas of Africa during the period of evolutionary adaptation. What he attempts to show is that our behaviors are culturally directed and not dances choreographed by genetic puppeteers. The truth is our behaviors are the product of both cultural and genetic influences working in concert.
Nonetheless our genetic heritage is in no small part the product of our experience during the Pleistocene, and it is part of the genius of evolutionary psychology to recognize this fact. Curiously Eldredge reveals that he understands this because on page 190 he writes (referring to Olduvai Gorge in East Africa), "It is the last best vestige of the environment that produced us, giving us insight into the very conditions in which our bodies--and behaviors--were shaped by evolution." That is pure evo psych, but apparently what Eldredge appreciates on one page is not always evident on another!
This is not to say that this book is without merit. Very well done is Eldredge's answer to the idea that rape is evolutionarily adaptive. (It is not: it is socially abhorrent for one thing; and since we are social animals, the rapist's behavior has met, and will continue to meet, with the severe disapprobation of society to the rapist's reproductive detriment. This is in addition to the fact that infanticide or neglect of the rapist’s offspring is widely practiced.)
Also very much worth reading is Eldredge's exploration of infanticide and his explanation for its near universal practice throughout human history--although his point that it is not adaptive in an evolutionary sense is flawed. Sometimes it is better to have fewer children so that the ones we do have gain our full economic attention. The fact that this was often achieved through infanticide does not alter that general argument.
It is a shame that Eldredge's emotional need to discredit evolutionary psychology mars what could have been a useful exercise. He should have concentrated on arguments against rape as an evolutionary adaptation and eschewed the mistaken and gratuitous attacks on his colleagues. His general concern that those not expert in evolutionary biology sometimes overrate the genetic human endowment and underrate the cultural influence is a good one; but this point has to be made without straw men and ad hominem attacks, otherwise the author loses credibility and begins to sound more like a radio talk show host than a reputable scientist.
Note too that Eldredge's dedication is "In the spirit of Marvin Harris, 1927-2002." Harris was an anthropologist of unusual acumen who liked to debunk popular misconceptions, such as why cows are "worshipped" in India or why Muslims and Jews don't eat pork. He wrote such felicitous and readable prose that his books sold like novels. Well, Eldredge, to paraphrase a politician of recent memory, is no Marvin Harris. But he tries, and when he gets past his rather vague and somewhat mysterious confusion with the language of sociobiology and evolutionary psychology, and goes for the jugular, as it were, of the delusion of adaptive rape, he almost gets there.
--Dennis Littrell, author of “Understanding Evolution and Ourselves”
This is an attack on what Eldredge calls "ultra-Darwinism" and what he imagines is "selfish gene biology." The main problem in the first instance is that no such animal as "ultra-Darwinism" exists (it's just a slur); and in the second he is tilting against the windmill of a metaphor.
Richard Dawkins, celebrated author of The Selfish Gene (1976), is well aware that genes are not "selfish" in a literal sense. Furthermore, nearly everybody knows that genes work in concert with the environment to shape our biology and our behavior. Indeed, there is nary an evolutionary biologist outside of Bob Jones University who thinks that some kind of endowment, fixed or otherwise, is the exclusive determinate of who we are.
But Eldredge seems unaware of the modern understanding. Not only is he tilting at windmills, he is setting up and trying to knock down straw men that don't exist. Let's look at some of his accusations.
He wants us to know that the drive to eat and stay alive is more fundamental that the drive to reproduce. He calls this the primacy of economics over sex. This is fine, but I know of no evolutionary biologist, anthropologist or sociobiologist who thinks otherwise. They do not mistake the blueprint for the building. Of course in the mass culture a simplistic imbibing of Darwinism and a literal grokking of the metaphor of the selfish gene does exist. It is therefore perhaps a shame that some of this book does not appear in say People magazine to set the general public straight.
Eldredge notes that reproduction is NOT the purpose of life and posits the existential view that if life has a purpose "it is simply to live." (p. 46) But "purpose" is entirely an anthropomorphic notion and has no place in evolutionary biological thinking..
He wants to emphasize the cooperative nature of organisms as opposed to the idea that nature is competitive. He writes that "overt, no-holds-barred competition in the mating arena is, in the last analysis, relatively rare." And then on the very same page (66) he more or less contradicts himself by writing that male birds "stake out a territory (usually constantly defended against intruding males)..." Note that even using such ideas as "defended" ushers us into the land of metaphor. The birds actually react instinctively to the close proximity of other males and try to chase them away. We think they are "defending territory."
Eldredge is saying that the males are not fighting over females or sex but are holding onto valuable real estate--that is, their behavior is economic and not sexual. In a nut shell this is his point: life is lived primarily as an economic venture. What counts is getting enough to eat while avoiding life's many pitfalls. He believes it is a mistake to go further and add that the purpose of these behaviors is to reproduce. Again the bugaboo here is that word "purpose." The truth is that all organisms once they have secured the necessities of life try to reproduce. This is not the same thing as saying that is their "purpose."
What I especially dislike however is not Eldredge's insistence on what should be obvious, but the surly manner in which he attempts to dismiss certain of his colleagues and his attempt to ridicule ideas he either doesn't understand or thinks are being applied too broadly. His dismissive labeling--"hard-core evolutionary genetics," p. 130; E. O. Wilson's "consilience gambit" (why is it a "gambit"?) p. 249, "ultra-Darwinism," etc.--cannot stand for cogent argument. Particularly offensive is his repetition of what he calls "the Pleistocene cop-out." His argument here is that evolutionary psychologists explain current human behavior in terms of what worked on the savannas of Africa during the period of evolutionary adaptation. What he attempts to show is that our behaviors are culturally directed and not dances choreographed by genetic puppeteers. The truth is our behaviors are the product of both cultural and genetic influences working in concert.
Nonetheless our genetic heritage is in no small part the product of our experience during the Pleistocene, and it is part of the genius of evolutionary psychology to recognize this fact. Curiously Eldredge reveals that he understands this because on page 190 he writes (referring to Olduvai Gorge in East Africa), "It is the last best vestige of the environment that produced us, giving us insight into the very conditions in which our bodies--and behaviors--were shaped by evolution." That is pure evo psych, but apparently what Eldredge appreciates on one page is not always evident on another!
This is not to say that this book is without merit. Very well done is Eldredge's answer to the idea that rape is evolutionarily adaptive. (It is not: it is socially abhorrent for one thing; and since we are social animals, the rapist's behavior has met, and will continue to meet, with the severe disapprobation of society to the rapist's reproductive detriment. This is in addition to the fact that infanticide or neglect of the rapist’s offspring is widely practiced.)
Also very much worth reading is Eldredge's exploration of infanticide and his explanation for its near universal practice throughout human history--although his point that it is not adaptive in an evolutionary sense is flawed. Sometimes it is better to have fewer children so that the ones we do have gain our full economic attention. The fact that this was often achieved through infanticide does not alter that general argument.
It is a shame that Eldredge's emotional need to discredit evolutionary psychology mars what could have been a useful exercise. He should have concentrated on arguments against rape as an evolutionary adaptation and eschewed the mistaken and gratuitous attacks on his colleagues. His general concern that those not expert in evolutionary biology sometimes overrate the genetic human endowment and underrate the cultural influence is a good one; but this point has to be made without straw men and ad hominem attacks, otherwise the author loses credibility and begins to sound more like a radio talk show host than a reputable scientist.
Note too that Eldredge's dedication is "In the spirit of Marvin Harris, 1927-2002." Harris was an anthropologist of unusual acumen who liked to debunk popular misconceptions, such as why cows are "worshipped" in India or why Muslims and Jews don't eat pork. He wrote such felicitous and readable prose that his books sold like novels. Well, Eldredge, to paraphrase a politician of recent memory, is no Marvin Harris. But he tries, and when he gets past his rather vague and somewhat mysterious confusion with the language of sociobiology and evolutionary psychology, and goes for the jugular, as it were, of the delusion of adaptive rape, he almost gets there.
--Dennis Littrell, author of “Understanding Evolution and Ourselves”
August 18, 2007
This is essentially a critique of Dawkins' "The Selfish Gene" and anyone who subscribes to "selfish gene thinking." I didn't totally follow his arguments---he went off on a lot of non-sequiters---and I disagreed with him on his central position. He argues that selfish gene centered views are misguided b/c they assume that the instructions (genes) are more important than the product (bodies and brains) that those instructions are supposed to build. Eldredge does not seem to want to admit the possibility that genes are so important. He also mistakenly seems to believe that a gene-centered view precludes the environment from profoundly affecting the way in which the genes are expressed. Maybe I missed something in his argument....but I just don't think he expressed his position very clearly.
October 27, 2021
I read this right after finishing The Selfish Gene to get a good rebuttal to Dawkins. The meat of the book didn’t start until part 2 and half of the book could have been condensed to avoid repetition.
January 12, 2019
Interesting
March 12, 2019
Denial of selfish gene by Dawkins
November 23, 2019
Not sure what I was hoping to learn here...
September 30, 2008
Not what I thought it was going to be. Totally along my lines though, with evolution and psychology overlapping. I enjoyed learning more about why we reproduce and what Natural Selection means in a society like ours in 2009.
February 21, 2008
Thought provoking. Some day when I'm smart enough I'll challenge a few of his assertions, otherwise, I mostly agree with his arguments. We are not slaves to our genes.
Want to read
March 27, 2008I saw this at the Natural History Museum. Looks like a worth y read.
Read
August 10, 2011December 16 2005
August 25, 2017
I totally disagree on his theory
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews