I’ve been listening to some of the podcasts of the US Library of Congress (gorgeous “Reading Room” shown above). They have a series on “Music and the Brain,” which has been pretty interesting.
Since it HAS been interesting, I really hate to ding it, but they needled one of my many and varied sore points. (I almost said, “pet peeves” instead of “sore points.” But I guess the “pet” peeve must be the number one peeve, or something close to the top, and I’m not willing to rank them yet. And needling should be done to a sore point. Ouch.)
But really, I’m not dinging the podcast. I’m dinging one particular guy who actually was just fine except for one particular shortcut he took. That shortcut is used all the time by people talking about evolution, but is unhelpful to people who don’t know it’s a shortcut.
Three paragraphs in, and you’re still wondering what the hell I’m talking about. Par for the course, but here goes:
The speaker in question is Daniel Levitin, the author of The World in Six Songs. He’s talking about how music was a serious and underestimated part of human evolution. So far so good.
He gets to an example, saying that humans who have orgasms together (not necessarily simultaneously) get a shot of oxytocin, which boosts feelings of trust towards people around them. And the only other time that that happens is when people sing together.
I won’t talk about whether either statement is true, though the second one sounds wrong to my internal BS meter.
Where he goes wrong: He says something like, “how do you keep the male around after sex (to help raise the offspring)? Both parents were needed to raise children. So evolution hit on oxytocin to build trust.” And that’s exactly wrong. Or, at least, it’s an unhelpful shortcut to use for an audience that he’s already admitted might not believe that humans evolved.
Because that shortcut implies that evolution has desires and a method to achieve those desires. It implies a force, or intelligence, guiding and directing evolution. Which there doesn’t need to be in order to explain the process.
If it happened, it probably happened that oxytocin was released that way in certain proto-humans by chance. Probably a small amount at first, just like there are small hormonal variations in humans today.
If it happened, it probably happened that those proto-humans who got the oxytocin were more likely to raise viable young and pass on their genes. (Yeah, probably because the guy stuck around.) Over a long (long long long, etc.) time, the non-oxy proto-humans were outbred and absorbed into the oxy population. And now we’re all awesome oxytocin people.
I don’t expect every scientist who talks about evolution to have to explain that stuff every time. All I’m asking is a change of one or two words:
Not “evolution came up with this trick to keep the man around.”
But, “humans evolved in this way because oxytocin helps keep the male around.”
That might not teach people much, but at least it won’t actively mislead them.
Interesting theory about oxtocin. It explains why I love my Mac so much : )
Icky.