NEURO-EVOLUTIONARY PSEUDOSCIENCES: A SCEPTIC'S PRIMER

If the imperialist ambitions of Neuromania and Darwinitis were fully realized, they would swallow the image of humanity in the science of biology. Our distinctive nature, our freedom, our selfhood and even human society would be reduced to the properties of living matter, and this in turn would be ripe to be reduced, via molecular biology, to matter period. So it is particularly sickening that the humanities, traditionally a bulwark against the encroaching tides of scientism, have proved so willing to collaborate with the invaders. Neuro-evolutionary thought has been welcomed with garlands of flowers. Unforced marriages with the occupying forces have produced a multitude of “interdisciplinary” children bearing names that testify to the happiness of the partnership, although not to the equality of the partners. Worse still, neuro-evolutionary thought is breaking out of the academy (where it can probably do little direct harm except interfere with the endeavour to make post-religious sense of ourselves) to more dangerous areas such as education, social policy and politics, where it may do much harm in the medium term. And there is a potential for even greater damage in the long term, as I discussed in “To hell in a hand cart?” in Chapter 2.