Two Critics Without a Clue

摘要

What Darwin got wrong, according to Jerry Fodor and Massimo Piat-telli-Palmarini, was natural selection. They will fell evolutionary ethics; social, epistemological, and psychological Darwinism; and all such ills by cutting "the tree at its roots." The authors accept the historical and entirely material reality of evolution and are forthright atheists who want no part of cre-ationism. But, like many earlier critics, they cannot accept that natural selection is the mechanism of adaptive evolution.rnFodor (a philosopher and cognitive scientist at Rutgers University) and Piattelli-Palmarini (a cognitive scientist at the University of Arizona) attempt to make their case by biological and philosophical arguments. Here, I address their claims from the viewpoint of a biologist, as I do not pretend to much knowledge of other fields.