{"id":686,"date":"2007-12-02T02:44:41","date_gmt":"2007-12-02T07:44:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/s265039441.onlinehome.us\/philpaine\/?p=686"},"modified":"2018-08-15T18:11:54","modified_gmt":"2018-08-15T22:11:54","slug":"15417-%c2%a0%c2%a0-matt-ridley-the-red-queen-%e2%80%95-sex-and-the-evolution-of-human-nature","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/?p=686","title":{"rendered":"15417.&nbsp;(Matt Ridley) The Red Queen \u2015 Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><!-- \t\t@page { margin: 2cm } \t\tP { margin-bottom: 0.21cm } --><span style=\"color: #000000;\">This is a well-writ\u00adten and inter\u00adest\u00ading dis\u00adcus\u00adsion of the shifts in the\u00adory con\u00adcern\u00ading the evo\u00adlu\u00adtion of sex\u00adual repro\u00adduc\u00adtion that took place in the 1970s and 1980s, after the old mod\u00adel of \u201csex\u00adual repro\u00adduc\u00adtion opti\u00admizes vari\u00adety in the gene pool\u201d began to be doubt\u00aded and under\u00admined. Some ot these con\u00adtro\u00adver\u00adsies are very abstruse, and Rid\u00adley did a good job of clar\u00adi\u00adfy\u00ading them for a non-pro\u00adfes\u00adsion\u00adal read\u00ader. It was pub\u00adlished a decade ago, but from what I under\u00adstand there has been no major shift in the the\u00ado\u00adret\u00adi\u00adcal land\u00adscape since then, so I wouldn\u2019t say it was out\u00addated. The weak\u00adest part of the book is where Rid\u00adley tried to apply the bio\u00adlog\u00adi\u00adcal find\u00adings to human soci\u00adety. For exam\u00adple, he rather mis\u00adun\u00adder\u00adstood the \u201ctragedy of the com\u00admons\u201d the\u00adsis and mis\u00adap\u00adplied his bio\u00adlog\u00adi\u00adcal mod\u00adel to a social ques\u00adtion in which he had the facts wrong. [I think I\u2019ll write more on this in a future blog, after I rus\u00adtle up some sources]. But the book was still a good job of sci\u00adence pop\u00adu\u00adlar\u00adiza\u00adtion, and Rid\u00adley had the good taste not to turn the peo\u00adple he dis\u00adagreed with into vil\u00adlains and rec\u00adog\u00adnized that good sci\u00adence can be done by peo\u00adple on the wrong track (and bad sci\u00adence can be done by peo\u00adple on the right&nbsp;track).<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Arial,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: x-small;\"><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is a well-writ\u00adten and inter\u00adest\u00ading dis\u00adcus\u00adsion of the shifts in the\u00adory con\u00adcern\u00ading the evo\u00adlu\u00adtion of sex\u00adual repro\u00adduc\u00adtion that took place in the 1970s and 1980s, after the old mod\u00adel of \u201csex\u00adual repro\u00adduc\u00adtion opti\u00admizes vari\u00adety in the gene pool\u201d&nbsp;began&nbsp;\u2026<\/p>\n<p class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/?p=686\">Read more \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[946,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-686","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-b-reading","category-bt-reading-2007"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/686","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=686"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/686\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8761,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/686\/revisions\/8761"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}