I can’t say that I enjoyed reading this article very much; all this jargon is beginning to irk me. And then I find my mind wandering off somewhere with more sunlight and trees. Modulation? What?
My understanding is this: evolutionary biology tends to invite broad speculation on the part of non-specialists who think they’re qualified to make assertions based on their high school biology classes. (Which is why I usually only discuss this stuff when I’m drunk–no one’s going to be bothered by my baseless, uninformed opinions.) Why? Because it’s easier and more fun to fit scientific theories into one’s pre-existing ideas than basing these assertions on, say, observable data. The latter tends to take more work, an open mind, and all sorts of nonsense like that. Since evolutionary biology encompasses many philosophically sensitive topics (mostly just our creation and the reasons why we are the way we are), and since billions of years of its history are unobservable due to our irritating lack of time-travelling technologies, all sorts of people (including myself) like to butt in and dole out our two cents. In fact, the longer I take this course, the more evident my indecent lack of knowledge becomes.
But this isn’t as blame-worthy as I’ve ended up making it sound. World views are powerful forces, and not likely to change quickly, excepting some extreme happenstance. So, as we saw with that depression article, scientists of every flavor are not immune to such biases. Essentially, it’s good to remember that deeming a trait as better/worse, adaptive/maladaptive is not very useful and only marginally scientific. I like what someone wrote earlier about complexity: how do we define that, anyway? Because we tend to think that we are the most complex organism out there, just because we have invented things like the can opener and disco. Isn’t simplicity usually more stable, anyway?