The Prospects and Pitfalls of “Just-So” Storytelling in Evolutionary Accounts of Religion

Levy, Gabriel

doi:10.1163/15700682-12341306

Cited by 3 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 9 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Goodenough, 14 Woese, 15 and Wolpert 16 used it to describe their own work. It continues to be allowed by many editors in the title of journal articles [17][18][19][20][21] and has been used as a critique by distinguished scholars. [22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29] Table 1 lists several published descriptions of what makes an explanation a just-so story.…”

Section: Box 1 Just-so Storiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Explanations for adaptations, just‐so stories, and limitations on evidence in evolutionary biology

Smith¹

2016

Evolutionary Anthropology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Explanations of the historical origin of specific individual traits are a key part of the research program in paleontology and evolutionary biology. Why did bipedalism evolve in the human lineage? Why did some dinosaurs and related species have head crests? Why did viviparity evolve in some reptiles? Why did the common ancestor of primates evolve stereoscopic vision, grasping hands and feet, nails instead of claws, and large brains? These are difficult questions. To varying degrees, an explanation must grapple with (1) judgments about changes in fitness that might follow from a change in morphology - without actually observing behavior or measuring reproductive success, (2) the relationship between genes and traits, (3) limitations on doing relevant experiments, (4) the interpretation of causes that are almost certainly contingent, multifactorial, interactive, hierarchical, nonlinear, emergent, and probabilistic rather than deterministic, (5) limited information about variation and ontogeny, (6) a dataset based on the random fortunes of the historical record, including only partial hard-tissue morphology and no soft-tissue morphology, (7) an equally partial and problematic (for example, time-averaged) record of the environment, (8) the compression of all data into a geological time scale that is likely to miss biologically important events or fluctuations, (9) dependence on a process that can only be inferred ("form and even behavior may leave fossil traces, but forces like natural selection do not", ) and finally, (10) the assumption of the "adaptationist programme" that the trait in question is in fact an adaptation rather than a consequence of genetic drift, correlated evolution, pleiotropy, exaptation, or other mechanisms.

show abstract

Section: Box 1 Just-so Storiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Explanations for adaptations, just‐so stories, and limitations on evidence in evolutionary biology

Smith¹

2016

Evolutionary Anthropology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…In most cases, this view of just-so stories responds to G&L’s critique of the adaptationist program, or alternatively, it corresponds to the authors taking methodological cues from G&L while evaluating evolutionary and/or adaptive accounts. 9 Hence, several scientists and scholars have suggested that the phrase “just-so story” (or only the term story/stories) is to be conceived as an equivalent term for a (provisional) speculative answer, evolutionary hypothesis, or heuristic, that is, a starting point of evolutionary inquiry that might, but of course might not, promote fertile (scientific) investigation of evolutionary history (see, for example, Barash and Lipton 2010; Gottschall 2008; Griffiths 1997; King 2008; Levy 2013; Woese 1980). For these reasons, I label this approach as the “positive approach.”…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Brief (Hi)Story of Just-So Stories in Evolutionary Science

Hubálek

2020

Philosophy of the Social Sciences

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In this essay, I examine the usage of the term “just-so story.” I attempt to show that just-so storytelling can be seen as an epistemic concept that, in various ways, tackles the epistemological and methodological problems relating to evolutionary explanations qua historical/narrative explanations. I identify two main, yet mutually exclusive, strategies of employing the concept of a just-so story: a negative strategy and a positive strategy. Subsequently, I argue that these strategies do not satisfactorily capture the core of the “original” meaning advanced by Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Lewontin at the end of the 1970s. I revisit the foundation(s) of their anti-adaptationist critique in order to reframe it as a critique of distinctive methodological manners and epistemic maxims related to historical inquiry. Last but not least, I suggest that contemporary evolutionary thinkers have two conceptually different options: they can either adhere to the “original” meaning of the term “just-so story” or accept that “just-so story” is a term equivalent to “implausible narrative explanation.”

show abstract

“…Despite the enormous amount of attention paid to the evolutionary cognitive science of religion (ECSR) in the 30 years since the publication of Thomas Lawson and Robert McCauley’s (1990) seminal work, Rethinking Religion: Connecting Cognition and Culture , questions remain about what ECSR has to contribute to the more traditional approaches of the humanities and social sciences – specifically, the explanation and interpretation of particular manifestations of religion, through the study of distinctive historically and geographically contingent, sociocultural traditions, processes and institutions (cf. Laidlaw, 2007; Levy, 2013; Slingerland, 2008a, 2008b, 2014; Whitehouse, 2007). From the perspective of ECSR, most see a constructive mutual interaction: On the one hand, the academic study of religion benefits by the discovery of new ways of interpreting the origins and functions of religion.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Emotional bonds: Bridging the gap between evolutionary and humanistic accounts of religious belief

Turner

2020

Archive for the Psychology of Religion

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Recent years have seen a growing willingness in the evolutionary cognitive science of religion (ECSR) to embrace an inclusive, theoretically pluralistic approach and the emergence of a broad consensus around some key themes that collectively constitute a central theoretical core of the field. Nevertheless, ECSR still raises serious problems for some in the humanities. In exploring the reasons for the perception of conflict between humanistic and cognitive evolutionary approaches to religion, I suggest that both ECSR’s default account of the origins of religion and religion’s role in social bonding rely upon notions of culturally unmediated universal cognitive mechanisms that preclude alternative humanistic explanations. I subsequently suggest that the gap between humanistic approaches and the evolutionary study of religion more broadly conceived may be narrowed by further expanding ECSR to include recent research into the brain opioid theory of social attachment (BOTSA), which emphasises the emotional rather than cognitive basis of religion’s social bonding functions. Finally, I outline a possible evolutionary account of the earliest forms of religious ideas and practices, which decouples the origins of religion from the evolution of specialised cognitive machinery and which humanists are likely to find more amenable than mainstream ECSR.

show abstract

The Prospects and Pitfalls of “Just-So” Storytelling in Evolutionary Accounts of Religion

Cited by 3 publications

References 9 publications

Explanations for adaptations, just‐so stories, and limitations on evidence in evolutionary biology

Explanations for adaptations, just‐so stories, and limitations on evidence in evolutionary biology

A Brief (Hi)Story of Just-So Stories in Evolutionary Science

Emotional bonds: Bridging the gap between evolutionary and humanistic accounts of religious belief

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About