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John

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Middlemarch

by George Eliot

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Dec 21, 2021 11:05AM

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The Story of the Stone, or The Dream of the Red Chamber, Vol. 1: The Golden Days

by Cao Xueqin

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Dec 21, 2021 11:05AM

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The Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature

by Geoffrey Miller (Goodreads Author)

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John said: " When I mentioned I was reading Geoffrey Miller's book, the response of one well-read friend was "oh, that guy's an [EXPLETIVE DELETED]." Well, he may be, but even if he is, he's an [EXPLETIVE DELETED] who is capable of interpreting the evidence on se When I mentioned I was reading Geoffrey Miller's book, the response of one well-read friend was "oh, that guy's an [EXPLETIVE DELETED]." Well, he may be, but even if he is, he's an [EXPLETIVE DELETED] who is capable of interpreting the evidence on sexual selection in a way that will enhance your appreciation of evolution, life on earth, and even your own lived experience.

Forget about his behavior on social media, this is Miller in his own field and he's making it accessible to you, the non-specialist. Every field should have a Geoffrey Miller, deftly laying out the questions and the changing answers from each generation of researchers, while also showing significant historical nuance in situating the changing picture of sexual selection across decades of changing society. But what am I saying? Most of the resistance comes from something that hasn't changed: male ego. The idea that females are choosy and that this has an impact on evolution was something even Darwin was careful to introduce, as Miller shows. He also shows how the insights of sexual selection are forgotten and rediscovered, time and again in the history of modern science, all while laying out the science.

Some readers might want Miller to just give us the most recent version, perhaps a Skinner-Box world where most inferior males might as just well accept their fate. But life, and science, are not so simple. Instead, Miller tests out each idea, "steel-manning" instead of straw-manning, testing it at its strongest, and takes the reader along to the next big discovery that may render the last argument useless and false.

But your time was not wasted. You are learning to think like Miller, and Miller thinks like a teacher.

The result is a back and forth between examples of the biological world and fallible humans trying to grasp it. Miller is thorough. Some readers might find him repetitive. But some ideas bear repeating before they are absorbed. Miller's own limitations are on display, about a third of the way in, in a spectacular instance of dramatic irony, as he wonders why common social values seem to be at odds with the practices of a successful sexual competitor. Either Miller's time in the library, or his own personal affinity for the values of sexual selection, have left him unable to recognize the social imperative of reducing the vary frictions produced by the sexual selection as he himself describes it. As Rodney Hilton explained, the boundaries of society are the fruits of conflict, not concord, and traditional societies are loathe to reopen old conflicts because they remember the cost. Only in a spoiled modern world can we still cling to the ideal of the "alpha male," repudiated over 20 years ago by the same researcher who coined it (two years before Miller's publication date). In the real world, the wannabe alpha male would sow hate and resentment, along with his semen, and would probably wake up one morning in a ditch with a few little pieces missing. Because life is not a series of refereed single combats. Your precious, superior offspring will need safety to carry your precious, superior genes into the next generation. Humans are social animals.

Adonis was mortal, you'll recall, until Ovid's heirs made him into a god.

So pace to my well-read friend and his moral reaction to perceived sociopathic tendencies. I'm not marrying Geoffrey Miller, I'm reading him. And didn't Aristotle say it was the mark of an educated person to be able to entertain an idea without necessarily adopting it? Cherrypicking examples to confirm your beliefs is the luxury of the stupid. In a rapidly changing world, infested with proud ignorance as if it were a form of purity, one ought to grasp anything of heuristic value like a lifeline.

If, however, my daughter were to bring someone like Miller home from college ... ...more "

Dec 01, 2021 04:12PM · see review

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