Carl Sagan on our humble origins and our hopeful future:
..
“For all our failings, despite our limitations and fallibilities, we humans are capable of greatness.”
…
…
…
Conference Schedule
..
I’m prepping for the the coming academic year, and going on tour for academic conferences (this must be how Bono feels). I’ve been to Montreal many times, and always enjoyed the beauty of that city. Madison and Portland are new, and I’m looking forward to seeing them for the first time.
…
• October 22-23, 2011: Hmong Diaspora Studies Institute (Madison, Wisconsin)
On Life, Death, and Shaking Hands with Your Ancestors
Appropriately, I’m writing this in the middle of Hurricane Irene.
…
.A couple of days ago, NPR posted this quote on death by Steve Jobs.
No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.”
Direct ancestor/ descendants holding hands (my sons and I)
Digging a bit deeper, I was able to find that the quote came from a commencement speech Jobs gave at Stanford University in 2005, about a year after he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. By now, most people probably know that Mr. Jobs stepped down as CEO of Apple last week, and there has been speculation that this may tie into his past health issues. Such a close encounter with mortality would likely make any person pause and reflect on the big picture, and why it is that we ultimately share the same destination. I empathize deeply with Mr. Jobs, Christopher Hitchens, the people of Somalia and, well, everyone, since we must all one day confront the fact that our time here is finite. Death is the ultimate equalizer.
Part 5. Humans are (Blank) -ogamous: Pair-Bonding and Romantic Love
This is the fifth part on the evolution of human mating behavior, comparing evidence for promiscuity and pair-bonding in our species. Please see the introduction here.
____________________________________________________________________
…
“One of these days I will wake up – which I think I have done already – and realize to myself that I really do love. I find it very difficult to allow my whole life to rest on the existence of another creature. I find it equally difficult, because of my innate arrogance, to believe in the idea of love. There is no such thing, I say to myself. There is lust, of course, and usage, and jealousy, and desire and spent powers, but no such thing as the idiocy of love. Who invented that concept? I have wracked my shabby brains and can find no answer.” (Letter from Richard Burton to Elizabeth Taylor)
“Emotions and motivations (are) hierarchically ordered in the brain. Fear can overcome joy, for example. Jealousy can stifle tenderness…But in this pecking order of basic and complex emotions, background feelings and powerful drives, romantic love holds a special place: close to the zenith, the pinnacle, the top. Romantic love can dominate the drive to eat and sleep. It can stifle fear, anger, or disgust. It can override one’s sense of duty to family or friends. It can even triumph over the will to live. As Keats said, ‘I could die for you.’ ” (Helen Fisher 2004: 97-8)
“Only love can leave such a mark / But only love can heal such a scar.” (Paul Hewson)
…
…
Attempting to summarize the evolution of romantic love and pair-bonding in humans is an enormous task. This is exacerbated by many complications: the literature on these topics is vast; the term ‘pair-bond’ has been used in different ways by different primatologists in the past and is often erroneously confused with ‘monogamy’; the neurobiology of romantic love – which is not a prerequisite of pair-bonding – is complex; the question of when/if humans became pair-bonded in our evolutionary history is highly speculative; and then there is the complicating factor of culture. Furthermore, parts two through four in this series addressed ten biological traits indicating that humans have promiscuity built into us to some degree, and that monogamy, or at least lifelong monogamy, does not come easily.
Gibbons (Hylobates lar). From Wikipedia.
Part 4. Humans are (Blank) -ogamous: Promiscuity & Physiology
This is the fourth part on the evolution of human mating behavior, comparing evidence for promiscuity and pair-bonding in our species. Please see the introduction here.
____________________________________________________________________
…
We left off with a list of eight traits in humans suggesting promiscuity in humans. Admittedly, the previous post was a little thick, as it dealt with imprinted genes and population genetics. The current one concerns human reproductive physiological and anatomical traits consistent with a multiple-partner mating structure, building on a couple of points addressed by Ryan and Jethá in their book. If you’re paying attention, that’s three posts concerning promiscuity and one (yet-to-be-written) on pair-bonding. Perhaps it seems I’m stacking the deck, but please reserve judgment. One reason more space is needed to make the case for the evolution of promiscuity is that the biology is less well known, and more effort is needed to bring it into the light. That single post on pair-bonding will be an important one, and quality matters just as much as quantity.
…
Continuing on with our list of traits hinting at promiscuity…
…
9. Sexual dimorphism in body size. This point remains somewhat contentious. In the majority of anthropoid species (monkeys, apes, and humans), males are the larger sex, with the degree of dimorphism ranging from slight to extreme (Plavcan 2001). This pattern correlates strongly with mating structure and male-male competition (Plavcan and van Schaik 1997). For monogamous species like gibbons, males and females tend to be roughly the same size. In species where females prefer larger males or where males compete for access to females, bigger males will leave behind more descendants. This is true for polygynous gorillas and dispersed, territorial orangutans, where males are physically about twice as large as females. A good non-primate example is elephant seals. On the other hand are horseshoe crabs, where smaller males cling to the backs of larger females and wait for the release of her eggs. This ‘reverse dimorphism’ is found in a few primates, but is slight and only in some prosimians such as lorises and lemurs.
Former sumo wrestler Konishiki and his wife Chie Iijima, an obviously cherry-picked example of extreme dimorphism. (From smh.com.au).
Part 3. Humans are (Blank) -ogamous: More on Promiscuity, & Genetics
This is the third part on the evolution of human mating behavior, comparing evidence for promiscuity and pair-bonding in our species. Please see the introduction here.
____________________________________________________________________
…
Part 2 pertained to human behaviors that suggested a human propensity for promiscuity (primate sexuality, the excessive sexual capacity of humans, infidelity rates, cultural variation in marriage practices, number of lifetime sex partners, etc.). This post and the next are concerned more with clues from our genes, anatomy, and physiology suggesting promiscuity. I realize these things are not clearly demarcated. My advisor at Binghamton, Mike Little, liked to say that “biology is behavior, and behavior is biology.” But I think in general most people would agree that while behavior has a genetic component, it is more plastic than are anatomical structures.
…
We left off with a list of six traits hinting at promiscuity. I don’t want to simply rehash what Ryan and Jethá address, so this post addresses some additional points on genetics before returning to their book in the next submission. Continuing with that list…
Fetal ultrasound at 4.5 months, profile view
…
Part 2. Humans are (Blank) -ogamous: Promiscuity
This is the second part on the evolution of human mating behavior, comparing evidence for promiscuity and pair-bonding in our species. Please see the Introduction here.
_______________________________________________________________
…
“I’ll be frank. True monogamy is rare. So rare that it is one of the most deviant behaviors in biology.” (Olivia Judson 2002: 153)
.
In their best-selling book, Sex at Dawn, Chris Ryan and Cacilda Jethá suggest that there is a good amount of direct and circumstantial evidence that extended monogamy does not come easily for humans, and that this derives at least in part from our fairly promiscuous evolutionary history. (To clarify, they use the term ‘promiscuous’ not in a judgmental way, but merely to convey having multiple sex partners). Their main premise is that rigid monogamy became common only after our ancestors made the shift from hunting and gathering to agriculture. With agriculture came an emphasis on fixed settlements, private property that could be inherited, genetic paternity, and female sexual fidelity. They argue that this stands in contrast to our hunting-gathering past, when sexual relationships were more open and not confined to an exclusive pair-bond.
Bonobo sex. From Lola ya Bonobo
My University
My university, UMass Boston, has released a new promotional video on youtube (featuring a couple of prominent visits by Barack Obama). I’m not really a rah-rah type of person, but I thought it worth sharing because I am proud to be affiliated with my school. Boston once sought to be known as the Athens of America in part because of its commitment to progressive cultural, intellectual, and humanitarian ideals (O’Connor, 2005). The high cluster of many well-known universities certainly helped that perception, even if it never quite reached that goal in reality. As the only public university in the city, I like to think that UMass Boston carries on that tradition by making education more accessible than it would otherwise be (despite the fact that higher education, even public education, is getting more and more expensive).
…
I like it here. The faculty are committed and the students are diverse. And the location provides a great spot to go for an afternoon walk after teaching all day, where one can look out at the bay and the city skyline and just think.
…
Rah-rah.
…
Reference
O’Connor TH. 2005. The Athens of America: Boston, 1825-1845. University of Massachusetts Press. (Link)
…
Part 1. Humans are (Blank) -ogamous
“(A)s our forebears adopted life on the dangerous ground, pair-bonding became imperative for females and practical for males. And monogamy – the human habit of forming a pair-bond with one individual at a time – evolved.” (Helen Fisher 2004: 131)
…
“Several types of evidence suggest our pre-agricultural (prehistoric) ancestors lived in groups where most mature individuals would have had several ongoing sexual relationships at any given time. Though often casual, these relationships were not random or meaningless. Quite the opposite: they reinforced crucial social ties holding these highly interdependent communities together.” (Chris Ryan & Cacilda Jethá 2010: 9-10)
…
“We are not a classic pair-bonded species. We are not a polygamous, tournament species either…. What we are, officially, … is a tragically confused species.” (Robert Sapolsky)
….
.
The above three quotations were selected to illustrate the range of views that exist on the evolution of human sexual and mating behavior. This is not a trivial matter. To primatologist Bernard Chapais: “The central puzzle of human social evolution… is to explain how promiscuity was replaced by the pair bond” (that is, assuming the pair-bond has gained complete ascendancy). But it’s about more than our ancestors’ mating behaviors. Lurking in the background is the notion that our ancestral behavioral patterns impact current ones, via phylogenetic inertia. Additionally, how we view the past is important because, rightly or wrongly, we have a tendency to associate what is natural with what is good (but note well the naturalistic fallacy). For both of these reasons, the past matters.
On Fatherhood: Proud Primate Papas
…
For Father’s Day, Scientific American compiled a series on the biology of fatherhood, including a list of 8 species where males are integral in raising offspring. Included were birds (rheas, emperor penguins), mammals (marmosets, red foxes, wolverines), fish (catfish, sea horses), and even insects (giant water bugs). For some of these species, male parental investment extends to carrying fertilized eggs until they hatch. In others, it entails postnatal protection and/or procurement of food for young offspring.
…
Two things stand out. First, although the list didn’t claim to be comprehensive, at just 8 examples, it seemed quite short (they couldn’t make it to ten?). In addition, there’s just something peculiar about highlighting species that exhibit good fathering skills to begin with. Consider how odd it would be to encounter a list of species where mothers care for offspring. In mammals, it seems almost tautological that parenting is associated with motherhood since they alone can gestate and lactate. However, there may be rare exceptions to this, such as lactation in male fruit bats (Kunz and Hosken, 2009), and possibly in Robert De Niro, though this issue remains unresolved. Are species with active fathers the exception to the rule? What good are males, then?
Patrick F. Clarkin, Ph.D. 