Darwin was a polymath. In addition to his many other interests, he was an experimental psychologist studying the ability of people to recognize particular emotions in others, based on photographs. You can read more about this at Scientific American.
You may have heard the news. Humans and Neanderthals, apparently, had sex with each other at some time. Shocking, yes, I know. But the newish technology of sequencing genomes is turning up all sorts of fascinating (and potentially scandalous) data. In NatureNews Online you can read more about it.
The researchers arrived at that conclusion by studying genetic data from 1,983 individuals from 99 populations in Africa, Europe, Asia, Oceania and the Americas. Sarah Joyce, a doctoral student working with Long, analyzed 614 microsatellite positions, which are sections of the genome that can be used like fingerprints. She then created an evolutionary tree to explain the observed genetic variation in microsatellites. The best way to explain that variation was if there were two periods of interbreeding between humans and an archaic species, such as Homo neanderthalensis or H. heidelbergensis.
Speculation over Neanderthal/Human interaction has been ongoing for a long time. Some of the idiosyncrasies of the Basque language have even been hypothesized to have resulted from such interaction, as that region of Europe seems to have been the last place Neanderthal was known to live. That they shared space---and perhaps much more---with humans is, to say the least, and intriguing notion. [More . . . ]
Many of us would love to believe that we are completely rational beings in the sense that we are able to navigate a world strictly categorized in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions. Many of us would also love to believe that with sufficient will power all of us can move beyond unwanted emotions and beyond images and thoughts that "don't belong." That description does not comport with reality, of course.
Several psychologists once conducted a hilarious experiment: Students were shown a brand new bed pan. Apple juice was poured into the brand new bedpan out of a commercial bottle of apple juice. The students were then asked whether they would drink the apple juice out of the bedpan. Only 28% were willing. My source for this experiment is page 216 of Heuristics and Biases, by Thomas Gilovich et al.
You see, we seem to think as connectionist beings and emotional beings, as well as rational beings. Even though we logically and rationally know that we aren't drinking urine, the visual stimuli too strongly suggest otherwise, at least to many of us.
I have written the above as prelude for describing a gift I recently bought for a good friend. A few months ago, I had described a toilet-shaped mug offered for sale by a well-stocked internet novelty company called PrankPlace. My friend indicated that he would not be deterred from drinking out of such a mug. I decided to put his confidence to a test.
Today, I handed him his new toilet-mug and he was delighted. He promptly filled his new mug with coffee, and drank from it. Though he successful drank his coffee, he admitted that it was a bit off-putting to drink from the toilet-shaped mug, even though he absolutely knew that drinking from it would be nothing like drinking from a toilet.
I think there are serious lessons here. For instance, when one claims that he is not "racist," there might yet be images and emotions haunting him, things that he acquired as a child, that no amount of logical and rational thought could purge. And maybe we viscerally dislike someone because she reminds us of a teacher that we disliked (even though we are certain that she is not that teacher).
We are complex beings that are often not capable of defining and rationalizing our way out of disturbing or disorienting situations.
Character is forged by failure. There are thousands of examples, and here are a few of them: A worthy segue is the advice of psychologist Carol Dweck: Praise hard work, not intelligence, because doing the latter makes students unwilling to take chances that risk failure.
I have from time to time made the point that the entire debate over abortion and birth control and almost the whole edifice of what we call Fundamentalism in the world, in whatever religion, is all essentially over controlling women. Here is an article which has one of the most bizarre takes on the entire issue I've ever seen. The central premise is early on stated in 0ne sentence that defines all of this nonsense, in whatever creed you care to name. "Sexual relationships, while enacted privately, are public property." The twists in logic, never mind rationality, are among the most byzantine I've ever encountered. What is more, the writer doesn't seem to understand that this "philosophy" reduces children to little more than marks on a scorecard. The exhibition of marital health and fidelity is all that is important. The attempt to limit family size and indulge private acts privately for private purposes is reduced to an attempt to deceive the community, pure and simple. But ultimately, as in all other instances of this kind of obscene interference with the personal, it is the women who bear the costs, the burdens, and the responsibility. I suppose the next step would be to devise a kind of tracking bracelet for the penis and vagina so someone somewhere can determine when either is being used and where. I have no answer for this kind of inanity (or insanity). The fact that this makes sense to some people disturbs me no end, because it means that some people cannot see past the end of their own prurience. Yes, I said prurience, because to come up with this kind of thing, rather than demonstrating a balanced healthy appreciation for sex, shows an obsession with it that can only be described as prurient.