The more I read Saletan's piece, the more I wanted to beat him with a clue stick: Human culture is no less "nature" than an ant colony or a bee hive is. The distinction he's drawing is in his mind, not in reality. It says a lot about how he--and perhaps humans in general--think about the world yet says nothing about the process of evolution. Nothing, that is, beyond the observation that humans have seemingly evolved to think of themselves as divorced from the natural world.

I second that notion edw. From a practical standpoint, it sometimes makes sense to draw little lines around what's "natural" and what is "artificial", but from a moral standpoint, such lines are meaningless. Genetic tendencies derived from selective response to "nature" require no more or less "validation" than those from "culture". Why would they? What is that even supposed to mean? "Objective fitness"? Blah

Conceptually, the argument is straightforward. We're talking monkeys, and that in itself is neither right nor wrong.

or at least a meaningul classification...if you're a creationist.

That's what makes it so infuriating or comical (pick one) to watch Saletan tie himself up in knots with it. He spends so much time mocking creationism and intelligent design, yet can't write on the topic without unwittingly using their premises.

not to mention that the traits and distinctions we talk about as though they are naturally determined are actually culturally constructed and defined

Very good points, and rbear, you should read the New Yorker article on the subject, which has very excellent examples of how this is so. First, it points out that the IQ tests actually change over the years, because IQ rises about 3 pts per decade (obviously not attributable to evolution, but to environment). Yet the comparisons Mr. Saletan makes actually use results from different times, and therefore different normalizations of the test. Correcting for that gives roughly equal average IQs, not the whole standard deviations he defends.

Moreover, the article talks about giving IQ tests to people from different cultures. One of the questions is to group objects according to their function. So you're supposed to put a knife with a pair of scissors, for example. But in a West African tribal group given this test, respondents put the knife with the potato. Their way of thinking was utilitarian, not taxonomic. When the investigators pressed those taking the test, the Africans insisted theirs was the "wise" way. The researchers asked, okay, how would a stupid person do it? And the Africans arranged the objects the taxonomic way.

In other words, the article explains, this facet of IQ tests measures modern ways of scientific thinking, not intelligence.

As to the false dichotomy, it IS operationally false, but one used functionally by science nonetheless. In our prior conversations over the original set of articles, I always assumed that cultural selection was being included as a possible mechanism of promoting genetic differences. I didn't buy it, but I certainly didn't think Mr. Saletan didn't realize this could be the case.

Most people have little experience dealing with anyone whose IQ is significantly different than their own so they do not see that IQ tests a very real set of abilities. Within the great middle , differences of 20 points plus or minus do not often affect day to day functioning. However, at the upper and lower extremes, there is a vast difference in functioning .The IQ issues discussed in the article may be "statistically significant" from a researcher's point of view, but a day to day observer could seldom see any effects. This is a good example of a time when a scientific finding that is quite technical gets presented out of context by the press.

thank you, biologista. i will take a look