双语时事系列65:挑战进化论心理学

2009-10-23 00:00:00来源：网络

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双语时事：挑战进化论心理学

Recently, the doubts and questions plaguing the theory of evolutionary psychology have boiled up to the mainstream press.

最近，围绕进化论心理学的质疑已经进入到大众媒体

Questioning Evolutionary Psychology

Something is afoot in the story of us.

Well it’s pretty cool when we can see scientific viewpoints turning, slowly of course. Also known as a paradigm shift. Right now, it appears evolutionary psychology is under mainstream fire.

Put simply, evo psych posits that favorable traits during our hunter-gatherer days persisted in our modern contexts. Natural selection carved our behavior and locked it in place. For example: so-called rape genes are passed on to modern males because the cave dwellers who carried rape genes sired more offspring and thus passed on that trait or adaptation to more descendents than those without the trait. And so that’s why we have rape today. This is obviously an oversimplification, but you get the idea.

The public is drawn to evo psych because it provides a most desired thing: a neat reason, or excuse, for who we are; how we behave. That is not easily questioned, because it’s essentially unverifiable. We can’t go back in time to prove it.

With the appearance of a New York Times op-ed by David Brooks and a feature piece by Sharon Begley in Newsweek, the evo psych paradigm is being questioned in front of the general public.

These authors break the fanfare with two hits: evo psych depends on a relatively static environment over millennia, which evidence shows not to be the case. Our environment changes, and so the potential to engage genetic potential changes, dependent on the environment. Secondly, neuroplasticity appears to be firmly established, and the brain has extraordinary malleability and is able to adapt to different contexts over time. In short, the authors and their quoted researchers say the core of human nature lies in its “variability [across cultures and contexts] and its flexibility.”

挑战进化论心理学

我们的故事中有些新动向。

当我们看到科学观点正在转变的时候，这是一件很酷的事情，当然了，这样的转变是很缓慢的。这种转变也称之为“范式转移”（paradigm shift）。目前，进化论心理学似乎正处于大众主流媒体的攻击之下。

简单的说，进化论心理学认为人类在狩猎时期的一些有利特点在我们现代社会中继续保留了下来。自然选择塑造了我们的行为方式，进而把它固定下来。比如：所谓的强暴基因就传到了现代社会的男性身上，这是因为与那些没有这种基因的人相比较，携带强暴基因的远古穴居者能繁衍更多的后代，从而把这种特点或适应传给更多的后代。这就是为什么我们当今的社会存在强暴的原因。很显然这个例子过于简化了，但是能让你明白其中的思想。

公众被进化论心理学吸引，是因为这个理论提供了一个最让人心仪的东西：为解释我们是谁以及我们如何行事提供了一个漂亮的推理或者说一个借口。这不容易受到质疑，因为它基本上不可证实。我们不能倒回时间去证明。

随着David Brooks在《纽约时报》（New York Times）的一篇评论文章以及Sharon Begley在《新闻周刊》（Newsweek）的一篇特邀文章的出现，进化论心理学的范式正受到大众的挑战。

这些作者用两个证据对进化论心理学“热潮”进行了挑战：进化论心理学依赖于一个在几千年的时间里相对静止的环境，而证据显示这并非事实。我们的环境一直在改变，所以根据环境的变化，包含基因在内的潜在改变也在改变。另外一个方面，神经可塑性似乎已经牢固地建立起来了，而且大脑具有超常的可塑性，从而经过一定时间后能够适应不同的环境。简而言之，这些作者以及他们引述的研究者们称，人类本性的核心在于它的“可变性[遍及不同的文化和环境]和灵活性”。

Vocabulary:

Plague: 瘟疫；困扰，纠缠

Evolutionary: 进化论的

Psychology: 心理学

Evo psych： Evolutionary Psychology的缩写形式

Afoot: 进行之中

Paradigm: 榜样

Trait: 特质

Persist: 持续存在

Sire: 成为父亲

Offspring: 后代

Descendent: 后裔