Utopia, you are standing in it!

Lincoln University administrators did some consulting before answering questions first sent to them on September 21.  They finally answered the questions – about the incorporation of matauranga Maori in science classes – earlier this month but won’t say who was consulted.

The short answer is yes, it is incorporated in their science classes.

1. Is Maori knowledge incorporated in science courses, at Lincolne University

Yes.

 2.  If so, when was it introduced to science courses, why was it introduced, and is it incorporated in all science courses or just some?

Maori knowedge content began to be introduced into some courses at Lincoln University from around 2005 by individual lecturers who were motivated to do so.  Currently some courses available in 2018 have Maori knowledge content.

The university has been somewhat sparse with the information it provided and is not disclosing the identities of the people whom it consulted after insisting Bob…

There’s been a lot of kerfuffle on the intertubes about the value of evolutionary psychology, the field that studies the evolutionary roots of human thought, language, and behavior. I want to weigh in here with my answer to the question posed in the title, and my answer is, “Certainly not!”

Now I am known as a critic of evolutionary psychology, and I have been quite critical. For example, I’ve published two scathing critiques (one with Andrew Berry) of Randy Thornhill and Craig Palmer’s unfounded theories of the adaptive significance of rape (see references below). I have gone after the popular distortions of evolutionary psychology that appear in the press or books (e.g., my comments on David Brooks’s New Yorker article “Social animal”—an article subsequently turned into a dreadful book). And I have criticized some evolutionary psychologists for failing to police the speculative excesses of their colleagues.  But I’ve never…

I’ve been known for a while as a critic of evolutionary psychology, particularly when it first began as “sociobiology” in the Seventies.  At that time there was a lot of unsupported speculation being bruited about as “science” (i.e., human males evolved to have “rape modules”, a view that I criticized strongly). But over the decades, evolutionary psychology has matured, and I now see it as a valuable way of studying the origins of human behavior. Not that it’s all perfect—the “pop” versions, such as those produced by Satoshi Kanazawa, seem pretty dire to me, debasing a field that’s striving for scientific rigor. But even Kanazawa has been rejected by serious evolutionary psychologists.

Sadly, some self-professed skeptics have decided to debunk the entire field of evo-psych, and for reasons that I see not as scientific, but as ideological and political. That is, like the opponents of sociobiology thirty years…

Whenever I post on evolutionary psychology, lurkers come out of the woodwork, enraged that I’ve criticized their own discipline and vociferously defending the crappy papers that I sometimes highlight.  Recently one (or more) of the lurkers asked me to provide an example of an evo-psycho paper that I considered good.   Well, that made me think a bit.  Many of the papers are tolerable rather than outright lousy, but in my opinion good ones are rare.  But I’ve just read one that I’d put in the “pretty good” category.  Some might not consider the subject to be evolutionary psychology, but I think it is, for it’s about whether behavioral differences between males and females have a genetic basis.  If they do, then one can begin to uncover their evolutionary roots.  If they don’t, then we need not engage in adaptive storytelling about why males are aggressive and females are nurturing.

First things first, I’m no Trekkie by any means, heck I can barely speak a decent Klingon!

That being said, despite my best efforts to avoid being sucked into the black hole that is the Star Trek Fandom Universe, some general concepts, underlying themes and lead characters have made their way into my impressionable consciousness. You see, I do believe Star Trek was created upon fundamental, humanistic and universal themes; that if one were to look beyond the “geeky” sci-fi component, we would all find something we could wrap our heads around and appreciate.

That brings us to Captain Kirk’s right-hand man – the iconic Mr. Spock.

Spock has transcended Star Trek like Babe Ruth transcended baseball – you don’t need to have a grasp on the game to appreciate the Babe.  If you’d ask me, I’d say yes the pointy ears and funny name had something to do with Spock’s…