catching up on reading
May. 30th, 2011 09:24 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimacEvolutionary Psychology: A Beginner's Guide by Robin Dunbar et al (Oneworld, 2005)
In a recent discussion elsewhere, I wrote, "I have yet to see any evolutionary psychology that wasn't total guesswork with the strong smell of complete arrant nonsense. And it's true I was reading popularizations, but I've read popularizations of other weird sciences, like quantum physics, that smelled of neither guesswork nor nonsense. ... The idea of ev psych makes sense. It's trying to come up with actual examples of it where the problem lies."
But I realized that I hadn't let the field as a whole make a fair case for itself, so when![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
minnehaha B. suggested this book (though he apparently hadn't read it himself) as a possible introduction, I undertook to hunt it down. It was a little elusive, as it's a UK book never published in the US.
What interested me is that it's mostly not about evolutionary psychology, but about the general effect of biological limitations on human behavior, without particular emphasis on how or why it got that way. For instance, mental processing algorithms that limit the size of friendship circles. A particular focus is on developmental psychology, the growth of the brain processing functions and understanding of the world of the human infant and toddler. This is a field I had already been introduced to by an old but delightful - and apparently still valid - book called The Magic Years (Scribner, 1959) by a psychologist named Selma Fraiberg.
In most of this, Dunbar et al completely ignored the sweeping evolutionary imperatives that disfigure writings I'd previously encountered, but elsewhere in the book it did turn up, in two typical forms. First, the blithe assumptions of what life was like on the savanna and how that dictates our behavior today (despite, in this case, a prior statement that human behavior is not dictated by anything, the authors can't help writing as if it is), here with the usual content of statements that men like to spread their seed around and women don't. Second, puzzled head-scratching over some aspect of contemporary human behavior, trying to think of some evolutionary imperative that would explain it; here, the authors conclude that religious faith is explained by its production of endorphins. Good grief.
Simon Silber: Works for Solo Piano by Christopher Miller (Houghton Mifflin, 2002)
Quite a while ago I had a post on novels about fictional composers and this one was on the list, described to me as a "satire about a cross between John Cage and Glenn Gould." Seeing the post again, I decided it might be fun and it was time to hunt it down. And it was as described: Silber is a cranky recluse who refuses to publish or let anyone but himself play his works, concertizes rarely and at ludicrously slow tempi, hates Beethoven but doesn't let that stop him from cribbing and manipulating his works, and writes tape loops intended to be played ad infinitum and a sonata of which he'd been writing one held chord a day for his whole life and which is intended to take a day to perform.
The novel is in the form of the liner notes to a 4-CD set of Silber's work, written after his death by his biographer. DGK, who was tickled by the scene in GRRM's The Armageddon Rag where the narrator looks at the label of one of the rock band's albums, and the track listing printed in the book includes the timing of the songs, would just love this. There are track numberings and timings galore, for instance this from the day-long sonata:
Unfortunately it was less fun than it sounds. Like Silber's music, the book goes on for way too long. Anecdotes of Silber's eccentricity fade before Miller's real agenda, the unintentional self-revelation of the self-obsessed biographer. Would have been a lot funnier if it had been the length of a believable set of liner notes, about an eighth of the 232 pages it actually is.
In a recent discussion elsewhere, I wrote, "I have yet to see any evolutionary psychology that wasn't total guesswork with the strong smell of complete arrant nonsense. And it's true I was reading popularizations, but I've read popularizations of other weird sciences, like quantum physics, that smelled of neither guesswork nor nonsense. ... The idea of ev psych makes sense. It's trying to come up with actual examples of it where the problem lies."
But I realized that I hadn't let the field as a whole make a fair case for itself, so when
minnehaha B. suggested this book (though he apparently hadn't read it himself) as a possible introduction, I undertook to hunt it down. It was a little elusive, as it's a UK book never published in the US.What interested me is that it's mostly not about evolutionary psychology, but about the general effect of biological limitations on human behavior, without particular emphasis on how or why it got that way. For instance, mental processing algorithms that limit the size of friendship circles. A particular focus is on developmental psychology, the growth of the brain processing functions and understanding of the world of the human infant and toddler. This is a field I had already been introduced to by an old but delightful - and apparently still valid - book called The Magic Years (Scribner, 1959) by a psychologist named Selma Fraiberg.
In most of this, Dunbar et al completely ignored the sweeping evolutionary imperatives that disfigure writings I'd previously encountered, but elsewhere in the book it did turn up, in two typical forms. First, the blithe assumptions of what life was like on the savanna and how that dictates our behavior today (despite, in this case, a prior statement that human behavior is not dictated by anything, the authors can't help writing as if it is), here with the usual content of statements that men like to spread their seed around and women don't. Second, puzzled head-scratching over some aspect of contemporary human behavior, trying to think of some evolutionary imperative that would explain it; here, the authors conclude that religious faith is explained by its production of endorphins. Good grief.
Simon Silber: Works for Solo Piano by Christopher Miller (Houghton Mifflin, 2002)
Quite a while ago I had a post on novels about fictional composers and this one was on the list, described to me as a "satire about a cross between John Cage and Glenn Gould." Seeing the post again, I decided it might be fun and it was time to hunt it down. And it was as described: Silber is a cranky recluse who refuses to publish or let anyone but himself play his works, concertizes rarely and at ludicrously slow tempi, hates Beethoven but doesn't let that stop him from cribbing and manipulating his works, and writes tape loops intended to be played ad infinitum and a sonata of which he'd been writing one held chord a day for his whole life and which is intended to take a day to perform.
The novel is in the form of the liner notes to a 4-CD set of Silber's work, written after his death by his biographer. DGK, who was tickled by the scene in GRRM's The Armageddon Rag where the narrator looks at the label of one of the rock band's albums, and the track listing printed in the book includes the timing of the songs, would just love this. There are track numberings and timings galore, for instance this from the day-long sonata:
3. Selections from My Life - 1:00and so on for twenty sub-entries.
August 26, 1978 - :03
December 11, 1980 - :03
December 15, 1980 - :03
Unfortunately it was less fun than it sounds. Like Silber's music, the book goes on for way too long. Anecdotes of Silber's eccentricity fade before Miller's real agenda, the unintentional self-revelation of the self-obsessed biographer. Would have been a lot funnier if it had been the length of a believable set of liner notes, about an eighth of the 232 pages it actually is.
