Steve Stewart-Williams has recently published an informative and readable new book (link at the screenshot just below), and my 4000-word review of it for Quillette just appeared (click second screenshot below for the review):
As I implied, my review is laudatory, with only a few (really one) reservations, which is minor. It’s not a “page turner”, either, which means that you have to retain some fairly sophisticated biology in your head as you read it—stuff about sexual selection. This will discourage those people who still actually read books (they will also find my review long, as I have to explain the thesis, the nature of sexual selection, and the data).
As I say in my review, Steve’s point is to suss out the causes of human sex differences “above the neck” (i.e., in aptitudes, behaviors and preferences). The differences could in principle be due to biases, socialization, or genes (“innate” stuff), though males and females have almost exactly the same set of genes save for the crucial SRY “sex-determining gene” on the Y chromosome. Insofar as sex differences in physiology, behavior, preferences, and morphology are genetic, they must be due almost entirely to differences in expression of a nearly identical set of genes—expression differences part of a developmental cascade kicked off by whether the crucial SRY gene is expressed.
I’m allowed to quote just three paragraphs here, so here are three I selected:
But the questions [Larry Summers] raised remain, and there are several. First, are there real differences in behaviour and aptitude between the sexes? Although the sexes have obvious physical differences, many “blank-slaters” think that things are roughly equal from the neck up, with no average sex differences in thoughts, preferences, or behaviours. Second, if there are such differences, where did they come from? Are they due to sociocultural influences, like patriarchy and socialisation, or are they largely innate—that is, based on genes? Finally, if some sex differences are inherited, did the genes involved arise by natural selection in our ancestors, with the differences enhancing reproduction? Answering “no” to all of these questions makes you a full-blown blank-slater, while answering “yes” makes you a genetic determinist—perhaps the most damaging label that can be stuck on a liberal thinker.
In A Billion Years of Sex Differences, Steve Stewart-Williams argues that it’s time to engage these questions with data. Summarising existing research, he comes down closer to genetic determinism than to blank-slatism. That is, he sees significant sex differences in thinking, behaviour, and preferences as having a substantial genetic basis, but he recognises too a role for sociocultural influences.
. . . . All of this evidence for innateness—persistence despite discouragement, consistency among cultures and over the ages, developmental trajectories, parallels with other species, and the gender equality paradox—is explained most parsimoniously not by a purely sociocultural hypothesis, but by positing some genetic basis for sex differences. No line of evidence is conclusive by itself, but their “consilience”, the convergence of diverse lines of investigation on innate explanations, is convincing. Stewart-Williams hastens to add that we often can’t rule out some sociocultural basis for large sex differences, but as a whole the pure blank-slate idea just doesn’t hold up. We already knew that for things like height and hairiness; now we also know it for what’s produced by our brains.
Throughout the book, the assumption is, reasonably, that there are just two sexes, and Stewart-Williams doesn’t deal with the faux controversy about the number of biological sexes, nor does he need to. Read my review, if you can, and if you think you’d like the book, get it. Everyone interested in the nature and source of differences in behavior and mentation between the sexes should, I think, be interested in it.
Jerry, on a similar topic of new books, have you seen this (article by Pim Edelaar resurrecting Lamarkianism)?
“Updating Darwin: biologists are returning to an older theory to explain anomalies in evolution”
Yes, I saw it. It is what comes out of the south end of a bull facing north.
When people use epigenetics (which are a scientific reality) as evidence for Lamarkism (which is not) they either have no understanding of epigenetics or have a political motive.
Good review, by the way.
The striking thing about the evidence for innateness is that much of it—such as parallels with other species—is common knowledge, based not only on arcane academic studies but on everyday observation of animals. No wonder that blank slate theologists in academe make a point of willfully rejecting biology as irrelevant, and simple observed evidence as “white empiricism” and/or a power maneuver.
It would be very odd if we didn’t see evidence of innate behavioral differences between the sexes in homo sapiens, when we see it in so many other species including every other great ape.
I sometimes wonder who is more resistant to evolution…the creationists or the blank-slaters….
Testosterone is a harsh task-master.
There was a recent NPR story about how people in the US military can have their testosterone levels checked, and receive injections if they have “low T”. The story then segued to an interview from many years ago of a trans man (biological woman transitioning to a man). He was very funny and interesting, describing his previous life as a butch lesbian who eventually realized that all along he should be a male. So he started to do very large testosterone injections. The mental effects were described as very dramatic and rather immediate. When seeing an attractive woman (or almost any woman, actually), he found himself involuntarily surveying her body and fantasizing a pursuit for quick uncommitted sex. The libido was hard to handle and these mental adventures did not happen before. He also become much more interested in science! Today he happily lives as a man and passes for one at work.
Rather an unusual piece for NPR, and I wonder if they would want to do an interview today where mental differences between men and woman were casually admitted.
I could not help but get a vision of random surviving soldiers coming back from battle, being subject to a urine test.
I have a Quillette subscription, so will be heading over there to read the whole review. Looking forward to it!
I’m reading it now, about half way through. I’m enjoying it. His presentation of the nurture-only side is fair and his arguments for the biological contributions I find persuasive.
I remember reading a book on evolutionary psychology in the 1980s that covered the evolutionary basis of sex differences across species including humans. The authors were Daly & Wilson but I don’t recall the book’s title. It very much influenced my thinking at the time. I probably still have it stashed away somewhere.
The sticking point in modern society, as I see it, is the mistake of thinking like a human being:
We are tribal animals and we want to think of our tribe (for tribe read species) as separate from, and superior to, all other tribes (species). It is, of course, true that chimpanzee males do not behave like female chimps and the same is true for bonobos, gorillas and orangutans (In this species the question is further complicated in that flanged males do not behave in the same way as non-flanged males) so why isn’t it obvious that human males and females would almost certainly have innate behavioural differences?
The Blank Slate idea should have been dead, at least since Steve Pinker wrote the book of that name. Steve Stewart Williams is doing important work pointing this out (To the extent that the evidence supports it of course).
Perhaps Jerry can tell us how this book stacks up against David Geary’s textbook-
‘MALE, FEMALE- The evolution of human sex differences’
now in its 3rd edition(2021) and widely used in collegecourses.
first edition in 1998, so it has been around for almost 30 yrs.
It was/is published by American Psychological Association
Seriously, you want me to read both books and compare them? Sorry, too busy.
Since David’s book is almost 30 yrs old, and a widely used undergarduate text (in the 3rd edition), I thought you might be familiar with it already. I was really pointing to the fact that an excellent and 3 times updated overview of the topic had been available for the last quarter century, by a top rated researcher in the area, who also researches several topics in educational development in modern societies. I realize trade books play a different role from textbooks [Gawd knows this is true in human sociobiology, and has been for 50 yrs], but anyone who seriously wants to engage the topic does not need a ‘new’ book.
So , no, I dont want you to read both books…just as I wont read the new one…as unnecessary.
I once looked into the PISA math/reading results. Males were ahead pretty much ahead everywhere in the world on math. Females were pretty much ahead everywhere in the world on reading. The actual results were more complex. In some countries (male-biased) males beat females at math and reading. In some countries (female-biased) females beat males at math and reading. However, the male/math bias was remarkably consistent. So was the female/reading bias.
In other words, the countries where females beat males on math and reading, the gap was much smaller for math than reading.
L. Summer raised the issue of standard deviations as an important difference between the sexes. Damore raised the ‘people vs. things’ issue as an important difference between the sexes.