Joan Roughgarden’s Evolution's Rainbow: Diversity, Gender, and Sexuality in Nature and People is a treatise on taking diversity seriously which starts with biology, moves on to biologically-grounded anthropology and concludes with biologically-grounded sociology.

Prof. Roughgarden is not, however, arguing for Sociobiology (or, as it generally known nowadays evolutionary psychology): or, at least, not as it is generally presented. Evolutionary psychology (and psychology generally) gets a fair bit of stick. She has some particularly harsh comments about psychologists and therapists (p.262), appreciates population geneticist Jerry Coyne’s attack on evolutionary psychology (Pp 173ff) and compiles a list of errors evolutionary psychologists make (p.234). She is particularly not impressed by social scientists who refuse to listen to their subjects (p.382ff): social scientists who cannot avoid being so judgmental about the subjects they study should find another occupation (p.384). (Hear, hear: though it would devastate many faculties. Come to think of it, worth it for that alone.)

Her objection to evolutionary psychology is grounded in evidence and is not a blanket rejection—Roughgarden is impressed by evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey Miller’s theory that community interaction selected for higher cognitive capacity (Pp 232ff). ( yes, but )

This is a very personal book. Prof. Roughgarden connects diversity to her own experience as a transgendered woman (p.2) and ends the book with a short transgender political agenda (p.398) plus an Appendix of policy recommendations.

But is also very much a book concerned with defending and expanding science. She carefully distinguishes factual/biological claims from moral/evaluative ones (p.4). She is against poor science and in favour of good—that is, empirically grounded—science. ( wonders of evolution )

I found Evolution’s Rainbow to be a profoundly enlightening book. Both on biology and evolutionary theory in general and transgender issues in particular. It is also highly readable. It does not merely inform, it educates.

splodgenoodles lent me Elizabeth Marshall Thomas’s The Tribe of Tiger: Cats and Their Culture which I found a delightful read.

The title comes from a poetic celebration by C18th Christopher Smart of his cat Jeoffrey, written while in a madhouse as part of a much longer poem. Jeoffrey was his companion and a great comfort in his life in fairly horrible circumstances. Thomas notes that Smart shows good observation of Jeoffrey’s habits.

Marshall lives in New Hampshire and much of the book is a discussion of housecats (particularly the housecats of her and her immediate family) and puma’s (particularly a pet puma called Ruby). But this is far from a “cute anecdotes” book. Yes, the book is full of them, and they are delightfully conveyed, but they are used to illustrate much larger points.

I particularly enjoyed her discussion of lion behaviour from her field trips in Africa. Especially the interaction with the local Bushman, whose lives and tragic change in circumstances she conveys powerfully. Thomas is very persuasive that cats have culture which varies within the same species from place to place, that their cognition is quite complex and that it is important to try and see how things look from their perspective, rather than projecting assumptions on to them.

Such as just because pumas look like big housecats doesn’t make them safe. No more than your housecat would be if it were 60 to 80 cm (2.0 to 2.7 ft) tall at the shoulders, around 2.4 m (8 ft) long nose to tail and an average weight of about 53 to 72 kilograms (115 to 160 pounds). Though the book ends with a lovely bonding scene between Thomas and Ruby.

Great book for cat lovers. Fun and informative.

Is the title of an article in a philosophical journal by philosopher David Stove. Darwinian Fairytales is a posthumously published book of essays attacking Darwinism.

David was a very great admirer of Charles Darwin. He believed that the theory of natural selection was an enormous contribution to science. He believed that it is overwhelmingly probable that humans evolved from some other animal. He further believed that Darwinism was, as applied to humans, an obviously false and, indeed, a ludicrous slander on human beings.

David was an atheist. There is no solace for the religious in this book. (Indeed, it is rare to read a book so bluntly dismissive of religious claims.) He appreciates the power of the traditional argument from Design, which he thinks a very powerful argument. It is simply not true.

The attack on Darwinism (note, not on natural selection) starts with the very first paragraph: If Darwin’s theory of evolution were true, there would be in every species a constant and ruthless competition to survive: a competition in which only a few of any generation can be winners. But it is perfectly obvious that human life is not like that, however it may be with other species.
This inconsistency, between Darwin’s theory and the facts of human life, is what I mean by “Darwinism’s Dilemma”. ( too much of a good thing )

Essay XI, with requisite relevant opening quote (Darwin: …we may feel sure that any variation in the least degree injurious would be rigidly destroyed [by natural selection]), announces that we are all biological errors. For none of us are out there having as many descendants as possible. Silly us, don’t we know how to be good little Darwinians?

No, we don’t. Or, more precisely, it would be inhuman of us to be so. Which is David’s point.

Darwinian Fairytales is often a deeply amusing book, but it is not a cheerful one. ( in consideration )

I was reading Lyall Watson's Dark Nature: A Natural History of Evil and he was doing the irritating thing of talking about genes as if they have intentions a la Richard Dawkins, when it suddenly struck me that Richard Dawkins is probably partly responsible for the Intelligent Design nonsense.

Dawkins, in his titles (e.g. The Selfish Gene) and in his prose talks about genes as if they are purposive, as if they have intentions, rather than being simply functional. Moving from being functional to being purposive is the shift from something doing something in a purely functional sense to deciding to do something. The power of the concept of natural selection, what Daniel Dennett calls Darwin's Dangerous Idea, is that it shows how purely functional processes can produce outcomes which look purposive. Indeed, they can even produce actual purposive beings (us).

The trouble is, in order to grab our attention, sell more books and write in congenial ways, it is more fun to talk about genes as if they did have intentions, thus purposes, rather than simply functions (which, if they are successful, get replicated to perform said functions all over again, and again, and again ...). Something David Stove criticised Dawkins for.

But if you are going to talk about genes as if they have intentions, and genes are the central mechanisms of biological development, then the central elements of evolution are being talked about as if they have intentions. All the Intelligent Design folk do is talk about a Macro intentional designer rather than a mob of micro intentional designers. But the language of intentional design has already been imported in via Richard Dawkins et al.

Selfish Gene indeed.

And, since the distinction between the gene-as-type and gene-as-instance (what philosophers call tokens as per the type-token distinction) is also continually glided over, you even have effectively immortal intentional designers.

Comes from being clever instead of being accurate.

Picked up in Smith's Alternative Bookshop Born Gay: The Psychobiology of Sex Orientation which is a highly readable summary of current scientific research on the origins of sexual orientation.

The book takes the lay reader gently through the results of a lot of scientific studies. I particularly enjoyed the debunking of Freudian analysis (pp30ff). The authors also point out that a major limitation on inference from animal behaviour is that sexual monogamy is an unusual mating strategy among species (pp62-3). ( in summary )

An amusing result is that gay men seem to tend to have larger penises than straight men -- being about 5% longer on average (pp84-85). Gay men are about about a third more likely to be not right-handed, gay women about 90% more likely to be not right-handed, than straights (p.124).

Homosexuality is an uncommon (about one-in-30 men and one-in-70 women) but persistent human variation. It is neither unnatural nor contagious. The real issue is not the existence of human variance, but whether folk can cope with difference. But that is a problem which extends way beyond sexual variation.

Lepidoptera are butterflies, in case you didn’t know. The above was the title of a 1987 article published by W J Tennent in the Entomologist’s Record and Journal of Variation. It was about – shock, horror – male butterflies having it off with each other in the Atlas Mountains of Morocco.

Observations of same-sex activity in animals are recorded in Greek literature. That certain animals were sexually deviant was part of medieval world views – indeed, was incorporated in heraldry. Keen records the great story (pp 130-1) of a certain gentleman, granted arms by the Earl of Salisbury for valour on the field, being given a device of three partridges, a bird of aberrant and abhorrent sexual practices with the male being known to mount the male, whence ‘to bear partridges in arms betokens the first bearer to be a great liar or sodomite’.

Over the last two centuries, scientists have observed, and documented, a wide range of animal homosexuality. Alas, scientists are not immune from the prejudices of their time, so a considerable amount of obfustication has been engaged in to ignore, explain away, deny or avoid same-sex and other non-procreative sexual activity in animals. A particularly honest biologist reported of his beloved Bighorn Rams: I still cringe at the memory of old D-ram mount S-ram repeatedly…True to form, and incapable of absorbing this realization at one, I called these actions of the rams aggrosexual behaviour, for to state that the males had evolved a homosexual society was beyond me. To conceive of these magnificent beasts as "queers"—Oh God! I argued for two years that in [wild mountain] sheep, aggressive and sexual behaviour could not be separated…I never published that drivel and I am glad of it…Eventually, I called a spade a spade and admitted that rams lived in an essentially homosexual society.

The above is quoted in (p.107) Bruce Bagemihl’s Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity. Bagemihl both amusingly details said obfustication while providing a wealth of material on the startling sexual diversity of nature. The lightness of the scholarly touch is one of the best features of the book.

And nature has it all: virgin births (parthenogenetic reproduction) by female-only lizard species who engage in lesbian sex. Same-sex parenting, either by adoption or outside fertilisation. Using tools to masturbate. Using gestures to communicate over sex. Non-procreative heterosexual activity such as oral sex, anal sex, mutual masturbation. Transvestites (animals who mimic the opposite gender but don’t necessarily engage in same-sex activity). Transsexuals (animals who change gender). Step parents. Blended families. Courting rituals specific to same-sex couples. Intersex individuals (animals who mix male and female characteristics). It’s all there, in ( a riot of diversity )

( rescuing natural selection from Malthus )

I originally bought Biological Exuberance because of my interest in the homosexuality-is-unnatural argument (an updated draft of my essay on the same being available for those interested). Biological Exuberance certainly shed very revealing light on that, and more, but above all, it is simply a lot of fun to read. Talk about the wonders of nature …