quote:
Some genes may exist, creating a trait, which are neutral toward environment and so not a result of adaptation to an environment.
Damn. I've tried to resist being pulled into this thread...and I have failed.
Interesting point.
If certain tendencies toward male/female perceptions of beauty can be shown to be based, at least partly, on biology, then mundane sexual selection would be sufficient to account for it -- there would be no need to try to figure out what adaptive benefits such traits would have.
But of course that would undercut the main reason for evo-psych, namely giving legitamacy to the old parlour game of trying to find reasons for certain behaviors to be adaptive.
"Intellectually, scientifically, even artistically, fundamentalism -- biblical literalism -- is a road to nowhere, because it insists on fidelity to revealed truths that are not true." -- Katha Pollitt
™ Version 4.2
