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Why We Do It: Rethinking Sex and the Selfish Gene

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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.)

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.

This book is an embarrassment. Using the most misconstrued phrase in biology - "selfish gene" - as a foundation, Eldredge constructs the flimsiest of straw edifices. The structure, named "evolutionary biology" is then subjected to ritual ranting and vituperation. The denunciation focusses on the false idols of Richard Dawkins and Edward O. Wilson. The chorus of the chant is "ultra-Darwinism" - a meaningless term incomprehensibly still in use after a generation without definition. The theme of the exorcism is "economics". In countering what he sees as an established dogma of sex drive and reproduction motivating evolution, Eldredge asserts that all life pivots around its economic environment - food and other resources. How are these obtained, retained and controlled by organisms?

The significant organisms, however, aren't elephants or magpies or scurrying mice. They're humans. This canon of the Gould-Lewontin-Eldredge cabal - keep humans separated from evolution's process - has long been a mainstay. For a book supposedly unveiling the mysteries of evolution's long progression, Eldredge skims over other life in his haste to explain humanity. And he valiantly struggles to do that, but with a novel approach - he focusses on exceptions. In Eldredge's view, the economic foundation of natural selection is manifested in various cultural norms. Not all of these are pleasant, of course. Chinese and Indian cultures weed out daughters [or potential ones] to reduce family costs. To Eldredge, this somehow refutes the notion of DNA's drive to reproduce itself.

An underlying agenda in this book is the long-standing ambition to ease Darwin from centre stage in postulating how evolution works. Darwin fostered "gradualism" and Eldredge was part of the team advocating "punk eek" - the notion that species would reach a state of equilibrium before a "punctuation event" initiated a new type. Darwin wrote of "sexual selection" - almost forecasting how "selfish genes" worked. Eldredge will have none of it, instead postulating that resource demands lead to change. An unfortunate offshoot of his approach is the justification for humans savaging the environment in response to their genetic economic drive. This, of course, is Eldredge's way of undercutting Edward O. Wilson's hopeful proposal of "Consilience" as a means of increasing our knowledge and protecting the biosphere.

Even books intended for general audiences usually include some further reading recommendations. Eldredge can't be bothered with this chore, except for some sketchy entries in his Notes section. His immediate targets are but scantily represented. The true culprits of overstressing the "selfish gene" concept turn out to be media writers, not established researchers. To the initiated, his use of Gabriel Dover in demolishing "ultra-Darwinism" will come as a jolt. This blemish is only one pimple in a deeply flawed and misconceived work. Eldredge fans will rejoice [as will certain anti-conservationists] at this book. Those who've watched the growing wealth of information on animal behaviour, however, will only wonder at his grim tenacity in holding to false concepts. [stephen a. haines, Ottawa, Canada]

It is about time someone stood up for the use of solid data to back up "scientific" claims about the human psyche. Niles Eldredge has now written, I think, a nearly perfect rebuttal to the currently popular, but often undocumented, "selfish gene" view of human nature in his new book "Why we do it."

It is obvious to Eldredge that humans are animals. Indeed it has been known since at least the time of the early Greeks that humans were animals. This is thus not a new discovery, whatever the evolutionary psychologists may claim. It is, however, also true that we (and indeed all organisms) are more than the sum of our genes. Sure there is a "Human Nature." Sure we are not born with a "Blank Slate" personality, infinitely malleable. We are, however, more plastic in our behavior than the extreme "selfish gene" concept would allow. We have to have some plasticity in our behavior because we live in a complex society that requires cooperation. It seems to me that our ability to cooperate is thus as much a part of our nature as our "baser instincts." The question that scientists should ask is not whether murder, rape, thievery, and carnage characterize humans, but why most people do not participate in these antisocial activities!

Eldredge touches on many of these problems in his new book, especially in regard to sex and economics. By economics he means the functions (ingestion of food, drinking water, respiration, digestion, elimination of wastes and undigested food) that allow the organism to survive. Without survival there is no reproduction. In his characteristically clear prose he does a good job of demolishing the strict genetic determinist view of human behavior. Indeed, the so-called genetic determinists are not quite so deterministic in their real lives or in the details of their writing. So-called "blank slate" proponents ("environmental determinists") are often equally closer to "genetic determinists" than they or their rivals would like to admit. Much of the hype about human nature being the determinant of every human action, or conversely nurture being paramount, comes from the popular press and the profit motive (ah- proof of human basic depravity!)

Actually I have quite a bit of respect for (although I don't always agree with) many researchers often lumped as evolutionary psychologists, sociobiologists, or ultra-Darwinists (as Eldredge characterizing them). Of these, works by Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, Daniel Dennett and John Alcock are especially worth reading. Again one has to be careful in characterizing individuals in one "school" of thought as being always in lockstep every other "member." My main gripe is that when some sociobiologists or evolutionary psychologists get carried away by their own rhetoric they will often resort to value-laden anthropomorphic prose (words do matter!), extrapolation beyond their data, and refusal to present valid counter arguments and evidence. Such works, whether based on right or left-leaning political perspectives are nothing more than polemics, and while far too common, have no valid place in science. Despite human failings, the goal of science should be to approach to the closest approximation of reality as possible. Darwin would be appalled by the lack of honest debate often shown in such works! In his "Origin of Species," Darwin summarized and answered (or admitted the apparent validity) of numerous criticisms of his theory.

An example of a spacious argument for a rather bestial human nature is the hypothesis that a tendency to rape is an adaptive feature of human males. I think Eldredge does an especially good job of demolishing this view, based on a critical review written by Frans de Waal. In fact, most rapes do not occur with reproduction in mind as many (if not most) rape victims are either above or below the age of reproduction. Also (although Eldredge mentions it only in passing) many women die as a result of the attack (as the number of young women murdered over the last few years in Juarez testifies), especially in war time. If rape causes pregnancy the fetus is often aborted or the baby is put up for adoption, as noted by Eldredge. When criticized about the fact that rape is obviously currently maladaptive (many, but unfortunately not most, rapists wind up in jail), proponents fall back on the view that it must have evolved back in Pleistocene times, when it was adaptive! How this could ever be documented, short of inventing a time machine, is beyond me. However, as Eldredge points out studies on our close ape relatives and of modern hunter-gatherers do not support the hypothesis. Other rather tenuous arguments for "hard wired" behavioral tendencies have been made by Michael Ruse for wife beating and Stephan Pinker for infanticide.

What it all comes to is that, as near as I can see, humans are a complex weave of genetic and environmental influences that are nearly impossible to separate from each other. Because of this I trust the "expert" no more than I trust religious fanatics or fascists to make social policy.

It is perhaps my own bias that I prefer an at least somewhat indeterminate universe to a totally deterministic one, but I am willing to change my opinion if I am ever shown reasonable evidence that is unequivocal. Certainly Daniel Dennett has tried to make a convincing argument that free will can result from a deterministic system (he can have his cake and eat it too!). At least Dennett is aware of the problem and tries to solve it. However, I (for one) am not yet convinced and Niles Eldredge has, I think, published solid arguments as to why I probably will not be, at least any time soon.

Even if you disagree with him, read this book. For that matter, also read books by Dennett, Hrdy, Alcock, as well as E. O. Wilson, Richard Dawkins, Steven Jay Gould, Ernst Mayr and Richard Lewontin if you are at all interested in the subject. Then make up your own mind!

In this clearly written, easy to read and digest treatise, the author takes on both the ultra-Darwinians and the Creationists; and in the process makes some vital mid-course corrections to the misunderstandings left in their wake. My summary of the author's "startlingly common sense" revelations follows:

According to Mr. Eldredge, genes are not the "be all and end all" of evolution. Indeed, they are not even in active competition with each other for survival as some of the Socio-biologists (like Dawkins) have led us to believe? Their characterizations, which we have come to rely on, is rhetoric shaped mostly to fit scientific, political and ideological agendas and needs. A more accurate picture reveals that genes are just "passive pieces of information," quietly recording what works best in the economic and sexual arenas as they go about the task of building various components of organisms.

There is nothing "active" or inherently teleological about genes. Changes in the gene pool have no intrinsic meaning beyond the fact that they simply reflect success in the fields of sex and economics. In the case of humans, it might be added (but this would be a stretch) that they can also reflect cultural success. The simple but profound point is that organisms that eat tend to survive; those that do not: don't get to pass on their genes. It is that simple. Thus the idea that reproductive success means "carrying the gene pool forward etc.," makes a good metaphors but is a mischaracterization of the biological facts, and is in any case, far from the whole story.

This author tells us that the full story is a complex combination of genes, mutations, sex and economics -- and details why he thinks so as the text of this book. His main point is that life is not about evolution per se but is about "living." Organisms are a "combination sex and economic" machine: For they must survive before they can "live," and therefore get to engage in sex or transmit their genes.

Thus these two main arenas, sex and economics, rather than genetics per se is what automatically creates the separate hierarchies that we see as inclusive and exclusive groups structured in our cultural systems everyday in society at large. In short, it is culture that drives the idea of evolution being only a "gene machine," not biology.

As a result, the proper understanding of evolutionary biology and evolutionary psychology requires that we recognize the fact that these systems - sexual and economic - exist in their own right, independent of their genes. Organisms do not survive just to reproduce; they survive (meaning basically that they struggle economically) in order to "live." However, if they just happen to succeed at "living," i.e., survive economically, they are more likely to reproduce and pass on their genes. But natural selection itself is mostly about the random process of mutations. At the very least, as the mythology about man being a "gene machine" ebbs, the role of mutations must take on correspondingly more importance. QED

The implications of this book, as a 250-page clarifying technical note, cannot be overestimated. Among many other things, it pulls away the veil that shields the ideologies of a lot of biology-based cultural chauvinism, including that of racism, in which the claim made by racists, almost a theological mantra, is that genes are deterministic, that they are immutable and alone are what leads to the survival of the fittest, i.e. to people of high intelligence, economic success and to moral and sexual fitness. However, the truth as we see from this author is far from being just this racist's dominated fairy tale. Ten Stars

The author is his own worst enemy. I would love to get into his argument, but the entire book is poorly structured and has the taste of a religious rant. Chapters give an illusion of order. By page 40 he has said all he had to say, over and over again at every possible opportunity. I have reached half way and am finding it difficult to motivate myself to continue. The stream of conciousness style and repetition makes for heavy going and little new hard material seems to come. I am especially irritated because I got it in hardback and it wasn't cheap. Catchy title, though.

PS: Just finished the book. It didn't get better. Towards the end, the author even ridiculed a colleague in the field by name! This sort of thing is out of place in a publicly published work.

I admit to being a layman when it comes to genetics, so I enjoy the occasional book to widen my horizons. But in this case, I feel I have stumbled into one side of a private quarrel between erudite gentlemen and am somewhat embarrassed. It is one of the few books I have thrown away.

This book is initially confusing because Eldredge says he is trying to balance genes and environment when, as we read the book, he is really trying to demolish genes entirely.

For a book that is meant to be about sex it is strikingly odd that the clearest manifestation of genetic influences - ie the differences between the sexes - is hardly acknowledged.

Eldredge says that sex in humans is about power and self-esteem but if this were so then the most promiscuous women and prostitutes would be the most powerful people and have the most self-esteem. He also says that humanity has an insatiable desire for pornography. No, Niles, only men do. Without acknowledging these sex differences he can then ignore the significance of reproduction and the 'selfish gene'.

He avoids considering, for example, how the avoidance of inbreeding leads to different groupings of animals within the same species. Sometimes males will do much of their living alone or in an all-male group which cannot be accounted for in economic terms.
That these males will also risk injury or death to join a breeding group rather than just enjoy living itself should tell us that reproduction is not merely a side-effect of living as Eldredge says. Though we need to be alive to reproduce many males and females damage their own 'living' in order to reproduce.

And there can't be many mammalian mothers on the planet who aren't offended by the idea that reproduction is a mere side-effect of living! And does Eldredge really believe squirrels produce baby squirrels as food for foxes??!! That animals do what they do mostly to keep the local ecology going?!

As for humans decoupling sex from reproduction, lets face it, human males never really wanted it coupled in the first place.! Mating is ok but not what comes next. And very few males throughout nature experience any reproductive costs following mating so it should not surprise us if human males feel it is 'natural' to maximise numbers of matings but to use contracepton - preferably by the female so as not to interfere with his potency of course - so as to avoid the known consequences.
As long as a male body is 'mating' it is achieving its reproductive goal. Only the female body 'knows' whether it is reproducing or not, the male body can never really 'know'. It simply reacts to fertility signals - in human females these can be permanent signals just as strong as if they were sporting swollen, pink behinds. Human females have concealed ovulation not by never looking fertile but by always looking, or trying to look, fertile.

Even Eldredge's rape argument is not that support-worthy. Everyone agrees that violent stranger rape is abhorrent. The problem with rape is that the vast majority are far from this. Rape needs to be investigated in an evolutionary context that incorporates the clear differences between the sexes and how human societies view female mate choice.
For Darwin's contemporaries female mate choice was almost an incomprehensible concept. For much of the world today it still is - or it is something that societies do much to prevent as it smells too much to men as infidelity in wives or the wife's sexual refusal of her husband. Hence the widespread practice of controls such as purdah or female genital mutilation - or simple obedience to the husband. Female mate choice, of which rape is one aspect, is a problem for males, and consequently for females, of many species.

Some males, and often the human male, will use resources to seduce females. Perhaps this is why for Eldredge economics seems so much more important than reproduction. Perhaps his 'simply living' is more about the male perspective (not that acquiring resources isn't essential for females too)- more about the male mating effort rather than the female parenting effort. But how we experience being alive and our environment is very different depending on whether we are male or female and this is clearly about the active input of genes.

BUT Eldredge at one point says that a vasectomy 'for most men strikes too close to the seat of power'. So he does, at least subconsciously, know where the power source is - ie in the place where genes are replicated and transported into the next generation. He has to avoid becoming fully conscious of this fact so that he can sustain his view that genes don't matter and the environment is all powerful.

I can appreciate that for political reasons Eldredge may feel compelled to try to make an argument that the engine that drives everything is the environment. But even he recognises on some level where 'the seat of power' really is.

"Why We Do It:..." by Niles Eldredge, NY: W.W.Norton & Co., 2004 - ISBN 0-393-05082-3-hc,(5.5" x 8.25") 269 Pg., includes Notes & Index.

Author of 4 previous books on evolution, Eldredge is a real-life contemporary of Stephen J Gould, & certainly writes convincingly, knowingly on evolutionary biology & denounces Richard Dawkins of "The Selfish Gene" hypothesis (a really hot topicfor 2 decades). Eldredge, emphasizing "decoupling" of Sex from Reproduction, then probes interacting controlling factors influencing the Sex-Economics-Reproduction Triangle.

Table of Contents has 12 Chapters in Parts I-III (Duality of Life, Human Singularities, & Human Triangle). There are, happily, 22 pages of Notes & 11 Pg. Index. Amazingly, Eldredge discourses on - "Evolution throughout the species, altruism, Darwinism, Ultra-Darwinism, sexual & asexual reproduction, AIDS, birth rates & birth control, cancer, SIDS, puberty, Dolly (clone), soma(tic)/germ-line cells, infanticide, rapes, sexual slavery, bonobos, vervet ("green") monkeys, genocide, social systems & social 'norms', prostitution, mores, food-for-sex, sex-for-food, "making babies", and a whole lot more.

"WWDI" displays Eldredge's insightful reasoning skills as he delivers a powerful story about evolutionary genetics in easy to read pose that features meaningful witticisms, and an enviable knowledge of "pop" culture of the rich & poor in lands near & far. He writes with assuredness we associate with SJ Gould & bolsters arguements with facts & tantalizing snipits of information which gives life to his exposition. Although I have a background in genetics & sociology, it is not necessary to have such background to understand & appreciate the merits of this book. I was enlightened by this charming book wherein the author was able to tie so many loose ends together - & you'll enjoy this book as much as I did, so do read it...