What does Evolutionary Psychology tell us about the Evolution of Behavior? Natural History as Metaphor
Steven J. Scher
Eastern Illinois University

Evolutionary psychologists use functional analysis to answer a ‘teleonomic question': What is the function of a psychological feature? Despite claims to the contrary, however, functional analysis cannot answer a ‘historical question': regarding the evolutionary history of the feature, or the factor in an ancestral environment which led to the selection of the psychological feature. As a result, the historical models proposed by evolutionary psychologists hold the same metaphorical status as theoretical models from other (non-evolutionary) approaches to psychology. These metaphorical models have heuristic value in the study of proximate function, but they limit the inferences that can be made from the results of research in evolutionary psychology. Claims about actual historical evolution must be addressed with historical data.


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