ARE OUR brains like Swiss army knives, full of built-in devices for
understanding maths and detecting cheats? Do men commit rape to pass on their
genes? And do we enjoy gardening as an evolutionary throwback to our savannah
past? These are some of the claims that have filled the pages of fashionable
books alleging that there is a new “Darwinian” science out there, called
evolutionary psychology (EP). “Evolutionary” has become a term that can be
applied to everything from economics, medicine and sociology to ethics and art
criticism.
EP’s central argument is that present-day human behaviour has its roots in…
