Criticism of evolutionary psychology

Evolutionary psychology has generated substantial controversy and criticism. The criticism – which has been most forceful from proponents of constructivist, postmodernist and poststructuralist schools of thought – includes but is not limited to: disputes about the testability of evolutionary hypotheses, alternatives to some of the cognitive assumptions (such as massive modularity) frequently employed in evolutionary psychology, alleged vagueness stemming from evolutionary assumptions (such as uncertainty about the environment of evolutionary adaptation), differing stress on the importance of non-genetic and non-adaptive explanations, and political and ethical issues.

While evolutionary psychology has been accused of straw man evidence, ideologically rather than scientifically motivated, evolutionary psychologists respond by arguing that these criticisms are also straw men, are based on an incorrect nature versus nurture dichotomy, or are based on misunderstandings of the discipline.

The history of the debate from the critics' perspective is detailed by Gannon (2002). Critics of evolutionary psychology include the philosophers of science David Buller author of Adapting Minds, Robert C. Richardson author of Evolutionary Psychology as Maladapted Psychology, and Brendan Wallace, author of Getting Darwin Wrong: Why Evolutionary Psychology Won't Work. Other critics include neurobiologists like Steven Rose who edited "Alas, Poor Darwin: Arguments against Evolutionary Psychology", and biological anthropologists like Jonathan Marks and social anthropologists like Tim Ingold and Marshall Sahlins.

The evolutionary psychology response to critics has been covered in books by Segerstråle (2000), Defenders of the Truth: The Battle for Science in the Sociobiology Debate and Beyond, Barkow (2005), Missing the Revolution: Darwinism for Social Scientists, and Alcock (2001), The Triumph of Sociobiology. See also: rebuttals to critics in Confer, et al. (2010), Tooby and Cosmides (2005), and Hagen (2005).

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