"My dear, let us hope that it isn't true!" the wife of the bishop of Worcester is reputed to have exclaimed 150 years ago, on hearing that human beings might be descended from apes. "But if it is true, let us hope that it doesn't become widely known!"
When it comes to sociobiology - better known these days as "evolutionary psychology" - the bishop's wife has modern counterparts: The religious right and the secular and supposedly scientific left are remarkably on the same page, both sides inclined to dispute or misrepresent the relevance of evolution to human beings. The former, of course, deny the underlying science. But what about the latter? They're secular, they're rational, they're tolerant, aren't they?
And there's the rub. For more than 30 years, left-leaning academics - notably residing in the humanities and, to a lesser extent, the social sciences - have been strongly opposed to using evolutionary theory to help make sense of human behavior, in part because their professional training emphasizes the role of social learning and cultural traditions, and - perhaps even more - because they fear the possible findings. Do racial differences imply genetic distinctions that might argue against social equality? Are women fated for kitchen work and childbearing, not high-level physics? And even if the science is more nuanced than that (which it certainly is), will the simpler message drown out the details and provide ammunition for social regression?
