Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D.

To the Editor:

David Brooks manages in a few hundred words to endorse several of the most well-worn misconceptions of evolutionary psychology: The human brain, according to evolutionary psychologists, is hard-wired and closed off from the environment; humans are lumbering robots unresponsive to the environment; and human evolution stopped 100,000 years ago.

No evolutionary psychologist holds these laughable views, but we do recognize them as the tired pronouncements of polemicists.

In addition to the stellar books by Geoffrey Miller, “How the Mind Works,” by Steven Pinker, and “Evolutionary Psychology,” by David M. Buss, are superb starting points for readers who wish to learn about evolutionary psychology as it is actually practiced.

Todd K. Shackelford
Davie, Fla., June 29, 2009
The writer is a professor of psychology at Florida Atlantic University and is editor in chief of the journal Evolutionary Psychology.

Note from KBJ: Progressives hate evolutionary psychology, for it implies that human beings are less than plastic. How can you engineer something that resists engineering?

Note 2 from KBJ: If you want to learn about evolutionary psychology, read this. It is one of the best books I have ever read, on any topic. Among other things, it caused me to abandon feminism, which is a pack of lies.