The vindication just keeps coming for the unpersons of the Blank Slate. First Robert Ardrey’s “Territorial Imperative” is confirmed in an article in the journal International Security. The authors actually deign to mention Ardrey, but claim that, even though their “novel ideas” are all remarkably similar to the main themes of a book he published almost half a century ago, it doesn’t count. You see, unlike all the other scientists who ever lived, Ardrey wasn’t infallible, so he can be ignored, and his legacy appropriated at will. Shortly thereafter, Ardrey’s “Hunting Hypothesis” is confirmed yet again, and in the pages of Scientific American, no less! The article in question bears the remarkably Ardreyesque title How Hunting Made Us Human. It does not mention Ardrey.
Now another major theme from the work of yet another unperson whose life work and legacy don’t count because Richard Dawkins said he was “totally and utterly wrong” has been (yet again) confirmed! The unperson in question is Konrad Lorenz, a Nobel laureate who dared to suggest that genes might have some influence on human aggression in his book, On Aggression, published back in 1966. According to the authors of a recent Penn State study there is now some doubt about whether Lorenz was “totally and utterly wrong” after all. Here are some blurbs from an account in the Penn State News:
Aggression-causing genes appeared early in animal evolution and have maintained their roles for millions of years and across many species, even though animal aggression today varies widely from territorial fighting to setting up social hierarchies, according to researchers from Iowa State University, Penn State and Grand Valley State University.
If these “mean genes” keep their roles in different animals and in different contexts, then perhaps model organisms — such as bees and mice — can provide insights into the biological basis of aggression in all animals, including humans, the researchers said.
Do you think Lorenz will get any credit? Dream on! After all, he wasn’t infallible (what was it he was wrong about now? The “hydraulic theory” or something), and it’s a “well known fact,” as Stalin always used to say, that any scientist who wasn’t as infallible as the Almighty should be ignored and forgotten and his work freely appropriated. Or at least that’s the rule generally applied by the modern “historians” of the Blank Slate to scientists whose existence is “inconvenient” to their narrative.
BTW, the title typically used for articles about the study is very amusing. In most cases, it’s simply copied from the one used in the Penn State News; “Wasps use ancient aggression genes to create social groups”. Move along people! There’s nothing interesting here. It’s just a dull study about wasps.
No matter, studies on the influence of genes on human behavior continue to stream out of the Academy, demonstrating that, for the most part, such work can now be done without fear of retribution. That, and not any vindicated or unvindicated scientific hypothesis, is the real legacy of Ardrey, Lorenz, and the other great unpersons of the Blank Slate.