But this theory doesn’t really explain actual individual instances of the behavior in the present or deviations from it; nor does it have any predictive power.
No, I would take you to task there, Solveig. For example, consider two populations of the same species in a changing encvironment, excepting only their behavior, which is one population is varied and the other it is very consistent.
The one that has a wide variety of behavior to chose from, as the environment changes, will adapt more quickly to that changing environemnt.
He also notes that the theory leaves much unexplained–homosexuality being his choice of example (though how he knows that there is no evolutionary explanation for homosexuality a priori, I cannot imagine; there may very well be one, especially as it is common to many species).
There have been several posited; the most convincing I've read also provided an explanation for the prevalence of bi-sexuality in females and it's comparative rarity in males; if he's done such a half-hearted attempt at research to exclude even these, I'll happily avoid this book.
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No, I would take you to task there, Solveig. For example, consider two populations of the same species in a changing encvironment, excepting only their behavior, which is one population is varied and the other it is very consistent.
The one that has a wide variety of behavior to chose from, as the environment changes, will adapt more quickly to that changing environemnt.
He also notes that the theory leaves much unexplained–homosexuality being his choice of example (though how he knows that there is no evolutionary explanation for homosexuality a priori, I cannot imagine; there may very well be one, especially as it is common to many species).
There have been several posited; the most convincing I've read also provided an explanation for the prevalence of bi-sexuality in females and it's comparative rarity in males; if he's done such a half-hearted attempt at research to exclude even these, I'll happily avoid this book.