Robert Ardrey – Helian Unbound

More Egg on Pinker’s Face: E. O. Wilson’s “The Origins of Creativity”

If you’re expecting a philosophical epiphany, E. O. Wilson’s The Origins of Creativity isn’t for you. His theme is that science and the humanities can form a grandiose union leading to a “third enlightenment” if only scholars in the humanities would come up to speed with advances in the sciences via “thorough application of five disciplines – paleontology, anthropology, psychology, evolutionary biology, and neurobiology.” Good luck with that. We can smile and nod as the old man rambles on about his latest grand, intellectual scheme, though. He isn’t great because of such brainstorms. He’s great because he combines courage and common sense with an ability to identify questions that are really worth asking. That’s what you’ll discover if you read his books, and that’s why they’re well worth reading. You might even say he’s succeeded in realizing his own dream to some extent, because reading Wilson is like reading a good novel. You constantly run across anecdotes about interesting people, tips about unfamiliar authors who had important things to say, and thought provoking comments about the human condition. For example, in “The Origins of Creativity” you’ll find a portrayal of the status games played by Harvard professors, his take on why he thinks Vladimir Nabokov is a better novelist than Jonathan Franzen, his reasons for asserting that, when it comes to the important questions facing humanity, “the grail to be sought is the nature of consciousness, and how it originated,” and some interesting autobiographical comments to boot.

Those who love to explore the little ironies of history will also find some interesting nuggets in Wilson’s latest. The history I’m referring to is, of course, that of the Blank Slate. For those who haven’t heard of it, it was probably the greatest perversion of science of all time. For more than half a century, a rigid orthodoxy was imposed on the behavioral sciences according to which there is no such thing as human nature, that at birth our minds are “blank slates,” and that all human behavior is learned. This dogma, transparently ludicrous to any reasonably intelligent child, has always been attractive to those whose tastes run to utopian schemes that require human behavior to be a great deal more “malleable” than it actually is. Communism, fashionable during the heyday of the Blank Slate, is a case in point.

Where does Wilson fit in? Well, in 1975, he published Sociobiology, in a couple of chapters of which he suggested that there may actually be such a thing as human nature, and it may actually be important. In doing so he became the first important member of the academic tribe to break ranks with the prevailing orthodoxy. By that time, however, the Blank Slate had already long been brilliantly debunked and rendered a laughing stock among intelligent lay people by an outsider; a man named Robert Ardrey. Ardrey wrote a series of books on the subject beginning with African Genesis in 1961. He had been seconded by other authors, such as Konrad Lorenz, Niko Tinbergen, Lionel Tiger and Robin Fox, long before the appearance of Sociobiology. Eventually, the behavioral “scientists” were forced to throw in the towel and jettison the Blank Slate orthodoxy. However, it was much to humiliating for them to admit the truth – that they had all been exposed as charlatans by Ardrey, a man who had spent much of his life as a “mere playwright.” Instead, they anointed Wilson, a member of their own tribe, as the great hero who had demolished the Blank Slate. This grotesque imposture was enshrined in Steven Pinker’s The Blank Slate, which now passes as the official “history” of the affair.

Where does the irony come in? Well, Pinker needed some plausible reason to ignore Ardrey. The deed was done crudely enough. He simply declared that Ardrey had been “totally and utterly wrong,” based on the authority of a comment to that effect in Richard Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene. In the process, he didn’t mention exactly what it was that Ardrey was supposed to have been “totally and utterly wrong” about. After all, to all appearances the man had been “totally and utterly” vindicated. As it happens, Dawkins never took issue with the main theme of all of Ardrey’s books; that there is such a thing as human nature, and it is important and essential to understanding the human condition. He merely asserted in a single paragraph of the book that Ardrey, along with Konrad Lorenz and Irenäus Eibl-Eibesfeldt, had been wrong in endorsing group selection, the notion that natural selection can operate at the level of the group as well as of the individual or gene. In other words, Pinker’s whole, shabby rationale for dismissing Ardrey was based on his support for group selection, an issue that was entirely peripheral to the overall theme of all Ardrey’s work. Now for the irony – in his last three books, including his latest, Wilson has come out unabashedly and whole heartedly in favor of (you guessed it) group selection!

In The Origins of Creativity Wilson seems to be doing his very best to rub salt in the wound. In his last book, The Hunting Hypothesis, Ardrey had elaborated on the theory, also set forth in all his previous books, that the transition from ape to man had been catalyzed by increased dependence on hunting and meat eating. The Blank Slaters long insisted that early man had never been guilty of such “aggressive” behavior, and that if he had touched meat at all, it must have been acquired by scavenging. They furiously attacked Ardrey for daring to suggest that he had hunted. If you watch the PBS documentary on the recent discovery of the remains of Homo naledi, you’ll see that the ancient diehards among them have never given up this dogma. They insist that Homo naledi was a vegetarian even though, to the best of my knowledge, no one had even contended that he wasn’t, going so far as to actually call out the “unperson” Ardrey by name. The realization that they were still so bitter after all these years brought a smile to my face. What really set them off was Ardrey’s support for a theory first proposed by Raymond Dart that hunting had actually begun very early, in the pre-human species Australopithecus africanus. Well, if they were still mad at Ardrey, they’ll be livid when they read what Wilson has to say on the subject in his latest, such as,

By a widespread consensus, the scenario drawn by scientists thus far begins with the shift by one of the African australopiths away from a vegetarian diet to one rich in cooked meat. The event was not a casual change as in choosing from a menu, nor was it a mere re-wiring of the palate. Rather the change was a full hereditary makeover in anatomy, physiology, and behavior.

and

This theoretical reconstruction has gained traction from fossil remains and the lifestyles of contemporary hunter-gatherers. Meat from larger prey was shared, as it is by wolves, African wild dogs, and lions. Given, in addition, the relatively high degree of intelligence possessed by large, ground-dwelling primates in general, the stage was then set in prehuman evolution for an unprecedented degree of cooperation and division of labor.

Here, Wilson almost seems to be channeling Ardrey. But wait, there’s more. This one is for the real historical connoisseurs out there. As noted above, in the bit from The Selfish Gene Pinker used for his clumsy attempt to airbrush Ardrey out of history, Dawkins condemned two others for the sin of supporting group selection as well; Konrad Lorenz and Austrian ethologist Irenäus Eibl-Eibesfeldt. I suspect Lorenz was a bit too close to Ardrey for comfort, as the two were often condemned by the Blank Slaters in the same breath, but, sure enough, Eibl-Eibesfeldt makes a couple of cameo appearances in Wilson’s latest book! For example, in chapter 12,

During his classic field research in the 1960s, the German anthropologist Irenäus Eibl-Eibesfeldt demonstrated in minute detail that people in all societies, from primitive and preliterate to modern and urbanized, use the same wide range of paralinguistic signals. These entail mostly facial expressions, denoting variously fear, pleasure, surprise, horror, and disgust. Eibl-Eibesfeldt lived with his subjects and further, to avoid self-conscious behavior, filmed them in their daily lives with a right-angle lens, by which the subject is made to think that the camera is pointed elsewhere. His general conclusion was that paralinguistic signals are hereditary traits shared by the whole of humanity.

Brilliant, but according to Pinker this, too, must be “totally and utterly wrong,” since Eibl-Eibesfeldt is mentioned in the very same sentence in Dawkins’ book that he used to redact Ardrey from history! At least it’s nice to see this bit of vindication for at least one of Pinker’s “totally and utterly wrong” trio. I suspect Wilson is perfectly well aware of the dubious nature of Pinker’s “history,” but I doubt if he will ever have anything to say about Lorenz, not to mention Ardrey. He has too much interest in preserving his own legacy for that. I can’t really blame a man his age for wanting to go down in history as the heroic knight in shining armor who slew the Blank Slate dragon. He actually tries to push the envelope a bit in his latest with comments like,

At first thought, this concept of kin selection, extended beyond nepotism to cooperation and altruism within an entire group, appears to have considerable merit. I said so when I first synthesized the discipline of sociobiology in the 1960s and early 1970s. Yet it is deeply flawed.

During Ardrey’s day, the scientific discipline most often associated in the lay vernacular with resistance to the Blank Slate was ethology. A few years after Wilson published his book with that title in 1975, it became sociobiology. Now evolutionary psychology has displaced both of them. I’m not sure what Wilson means by “sociobiology” here, but I’ve never seen anything he published prior to 1975 that comes close to being a forthright defense of the existence and importance of human nature. Ardrey and others had published pretty much everything of real significance he had to say on the subject more than a decade earlier.

Be that as it may, I have no reservations about recommending “The Origins of Creativity” to my readers. True, I’m a bit skeptical about his latest project for a grand unification of science and the humanities, and the book is really little more than a pamphlet. For all that, reading him is like having a pleasant conversation with someone who is very wise about the ways of the world, knows about the questions that are important for us to ask, and can tell you a lot of things that are worth knowing.

“Five Easy Pieces” and the Ghost of Robert Ardrey

I know. You think I’m too obsessed with Robert Ardrey. Perhaps, but when I stumble across little historical artifacts of his existence, I can’t resist recording them. Who else will? Besides, I have moral emotions, too. I’m not sure where I sit on the spectrum of Jonathan Haidt’s moral foundations, but when I consider Ardrey’s shabby treatment in the “official” histories, they all start howling at once. Ardrey shouldn’t be forgotten. He was the most significant player in the events that come to mind when one hears the term “Blank Slate.”

What was the “Blank Slate?” I’d call it the greatest scientific debacle of all time. The behavioral sciences were derailed for fifty years and more by the ideologically motivated denial of human nature. Unfortunately, its history will probably never be written, or at least not in a form that bears some resemblance to the truth. Perhaps the most important truth that will be redacted from future accounts of the Blank Slate is the seminal role of Robert Ardrey in dismantling it. That role was certainly recognized by the high priests of the Blank Slate themselves. Their obsession with Ardrey can be easily documented. In spite of that he is treated as an unperson today, and his historical role has been denied or suppressed. I have discussed reasons for this remarkable instance of historical amnesia elsewhere. They usually have something to do with the amour-propre of the academic tribe. See, for example, here, here and here.

If there are grounds for optimism that the real story will ever see the light of day, it lies in the ease with which the elaborate fairy tale that currently passes as the “history” of the Blank Slate can be exposed. According to this official “history,” the Blank Slate prevailed virtually unchallenged until the mid-70’s. Then, suddenly, E. O. Wilson appeared on the scene as the knight in shining armor who slew the Blank Slate dragon almost single-handedly with the publication of Sociobiology in 1975. As I’ve noted in earlier posts, there’s a great deal of source material in both the academic and popular literature whose existence is very difficult to account for if one takes this sanitized version of the affair seriously. I’ve occasionally cited some of the numerous examples of articles about or by Ardrey, both pro and con, in popular magazines including the highbrow Encounter, the more professionally oriented Saturday Review, the once popular Life, the “recreational” Penthouse, and many others, all of which appeared long before the publication of Sociobiology. I recently stumbled across another amusing example in one of Jack Nicholson’s earlier flicks, and probably one of his best; Five Easy Pieces.

I hadn’t watched the film since 1970, the year it was released. I thought it was entertaining at the time, especially the iconic restaurant scene with the uncooperative waitress. However, I certainly didn’t notice any connection to the Blank Slate. It was a bit early for that. However, I happened to watch the film again a couple of days ago. This time I noticed something. There was the ghost of Robert Ardrey, with an amused look on his face, waving at me right out of the screen.

The great debunker of the Blank Slate turns up around 1:20:25 into the film. Bobby (Jack Nicholson), his somewhat trashy girlfriend, Rayette, and a few other family members and guests are gathered in the living room of Bobby’s childhood home. A pompous, insufferable woman by the name of Samia Glavia is holding forth about the nature of man. The dialogue goes like this:

Samia Glavia/Irene Dailey: But you see, man is born into the world with his existent adversary from the first. It is his historic, lithic inheritance. So, is it startling? Aggression is prehistoric. An organism behaves according to its nature, and its nature derives from the circumstances of its inheritance. The fact remains that primitive man took absolute delight in tearing his adversary apart. And there is where I think the core of the problem resides.

John Ryan/Spicer: Doesn’t that seem unnecessarily apocalyptic?

Glavia: I do not make poetry.

Rayette: Is there a TV in the house?

Glavia: I remarked to John, that rationality is not a device to alter facts. But moreover I think of it as an extraneous tool, a gadget, somewhat like… the television. To look at it any other way is ridiculous.

Rayette:There’s some good things on it, though.

Glavia: I beg your pardon? (Condescendingly)

Rayette: There’s some good things on it sometimes.

Glavia: I have strong doubts. Nevertheless, I am not discussing media. (Icy, condescending smile)

Susan Anspach/Catherine van Oost: I think these cold, objective discussions are aggressive.

As Catherine leaves the room, Glavia rants on: There seems to be less aggression, or violence, if you like, among the higher classes, and loftier natures.

Nicholson/Bobby Dupea: You pompous celibate. You’re totally full of shit.

Great shades of Raymond Dart! “Aggression” was a key buzzword at the time in any discussion of innate human nature. Naturalist Konrad Lorenz had published the English version of his On Aggression a few years earlier. Ardrey had highlighted the theories of Dart, according to which Australopithecus africanus was an aggressive hunting ape, in his African Genesis, published in 1961. The scientific establishment, firmly in the grip of the Blank Slate ideologues, had been furiously blasting back, condemning Ardrey, Lorenz, and anyone else who dared to suggest the existence of anything as heretical as human nature as a fascist and a Nazi, not to mention very right wing. (sound familiar?) See, for example, the Blank Slate tract Man and Aggression, published in 1968.

I’m not sure whether producer Bob Rafelson or screenwriter Carole Eastman or both were responsible for the lines in question, but there’s no doubt about one thing – whoever wrote them had been well coached by the Blank Slaters. Their favorite memes were all there. The grotesque, exaggerated “Killer Ape Theory?” Check! The socially objectionable nature of the messenger? Check! Their association with the “exploiting classes, or, as Samia Glavia put it, “the higher classes and loftier natures?” Check! As a final subtle touch, the very name “Glavia” is Latin for a type of sword or spear, a weapon of “aggression.”

I’m sure there are many more of these artifacts of reality out there, awaiting discovery by some future historian bold enough to dispute the “orthodox” account of the Blank Slate. According to that account, nothing much happened to disturb the hegemony of the Blank Slaters until E. O. Wilson turned up. Then, as noted above, the whole charade supposedly popped like a soap bubble. Well, as the song goes, “It ain’t necessarily so.” Ardrey and friends had already reduced the Blank Slate to a laughing stock among the lay public long before Wilson happened along. The “Men of Science” knew the game was up. Still, they couldn’t bear to admit that a “mere playwright” like Ardrey had forced them to admit that the elaborate Blank Slate fairy tale they had been propping up for the last 50 years with thousands of “scientific” papers in hundreds of learned academic and professional journals was a hoax. They needed some “graceful” way to rejoin the real world. They seized on Wilson as the “way.” Any port in a storm. As a member of the academic tribe himself, he made it respectable for other “Men of Science” to disengage themselves from the Blank Slate dogmas. Be that as it may, as anyone who was around at the time and was paying attention was aware, the man who was the real nemesis of the Blank Slate was Robert Ardrey. If you’re looking for proof, I recommend Five Easy Pieces as both a revealing and entertaining place to start your search.

Why is all this important? Because the Blank Slate affair was a disfiguring and corruption of the integrity of science on an unprecedented scale. It clearly demonstrated what can happen when ideological imperatives are allowed to trump the scientific method. For half a century and more it blocked our path to self-understanding, and with it out ability to understand and cope with some of the more destructive aspects of our nature. Under the circumstances it might behoove us to at least get the history right.

Of Ants and Men: More PBS Adventures in Rearranging Blank Slate History

The history of the rise and fall of the Blank Slate is fascinating, and not only as an example of the pathological derailment of whole branches of science in favor of ideological dogmas. The continuing foibles of the “men of science” as they attempt to “readjust” that history are nearly as interesting in their own right. Their efforts at post-debacle damage control are a superb example of an aspect of human nature at work – tribalism. There is much at stake for the scientific “tribe,” not least of which is the myth of the self-correcting nature of science itself. What might be called the latest episode in the sometimes shameless, sometimes hilarious bowdlerization of history just appeared in the form of another PBS special; E. O. Wilson – Of Ants and Men. You can watch it online by clicking on the link.

Before examining the latest twists in this continuously evolving plot, it would be useful to recap what has happened to date. There is copious source material documenting not only the rise of the Blank Slate orthodoxy to hegemony in the behavioral sciences, but also the events that led to its collapse, not to mention the scientific apologetics that followed its demise. In its modern form, the Blank Slate manifested itself as a sweeping denial that innate behavioral traits, or “human nature,” had anything to do with human behavior beyond such basic functions as breathing and the elimination of waste. It was insisted that virtually everything about our behavior was learned, and a reflection of “culture.” By the early 1950’s its control of the behavioral sciences was such that any scientist who dared to publish anything in direct opposition to it was literally risking his career. Many scientists have written of the prevailing atmosphere of fear and intimidation, and through the 1950s, ‘60s, and early ‘70s there was little in the way of “self-correction” emanating from within the scientific professions themselves.

The “correction,” when it came, was supplied by an outsider – a playwright by the name of Robert Ardrey who had taken an interest in anthropology. Beginning with African Genesis in 1961, he published a series of four highly popular books that documented the copious evidence for the existence of human nature, and alerted a wondering public to the absurd extent to which its denial had been pursued in the sciences. It wasn’t a hard sell, as that absurdity was obvious enough to any reasonably intelligent child. Following Ardrey’s lead, a few scientists began to break ranks, particularly in Europe where the Blank Slate had never achieved a level of control comparable to that prevailing in the United States. They included the likes of Konrad Lorenz (On Aggression, first published in German in 1963), Desmond Morris (The Naked Ape, 1967), Lionel Tiger (Men in Groups, 1969), and Robin Fox (The Imperial Animal, 1971, with Lionel Tiger). The Blank Slate reaction to these works, not to mention the copious coverage of Ardrey and the rest that began appearing in the popular media, was furious. Man and Aggression, a collection of Blank Slater rants directed mainly at Ardrey and Lorenz, with novelist William Golding thrown in for good measure, is an outstanding piece of historical source material documenting that reaction. Edited by Ashley Montagu and published in 1968, it typifies the usual Blank Slate MO – attacks on straw men combined with accusations of racism and fascism. That, of course, remains the MO of the “progressive” Left to this day.

The Blank Slaters could intimidate the scientific community, but not so the public at large. Thanks to Ardrey and the rest, by the mid-70s the behavioral sciences were in danger of becoming a laughing stock. Finally, in 1975, E. O. Wilson broke ranks and published Sociobiology, a book that was later to gain a notoriety in the manufactured “history” of the Blank Slate out of all proportion to its real significance. Of the 27 chapters, 25 dealt with animal behavior. Only the first and last chapters focused on human behavior. Nothing in those two chapters, nor in Wilson’s On Human Nature, published in 1978, could reasonably be described as other than an afterthought to the works of Ardrey and others that had appeared much earlier as far as human nature is concerned. Its real novelty wasn’t its content, but the fact that it was the first popular science book asserting the existence and importance of human nature by a scientist in the United States that reached a significant audience. This fact was well known to Wilson, not to mention his many Blank Slate detractors. In their diatribe Against Sociobiology, which appeared in the New York Review of Books in 1975 they wrote, “From Herbert Spencer, who coined the phrase “survival of the fittest,” to Konrad Lorenz, Robert Ardrey, and now E. O. Wilson, we have seen proclaimed the primacy of natural selection in determining most important characteristics of human behavior.

As we know in retrospect, the Blank Slaters were facing a long, losing battle against recognition of the obvious. By the end of the 1990s, even the editors at PBS began scurrying off the sinking ship. Finally, in the scientific shambles left in the aftermath of the collapse of the Blank Slate orthodoxy, Steven Pinker published his The Blank Slate. It was the first major attempt at historical revisionism by a scientist, and it contained most of the fairytales about the affair that are now widely accepted as fact. I had begun reading the works of Ardrey, Lorenz and the rest in the early 70s, and had followed the subsequent unraveling of the Blank Slate with interest. When I began reading The Blank Slate, I assumed I would find a vindication of the seminal role they had played in the 1960s in bringing about its demise. I was stunned to find that, instead, as far as Pinker was concerned, the 60s never happened! Ardrey was mentioned only a single time, and then only with the assertion that “the sociobiologists themselves” had declared him and Lorenz “totally and utterly” wrong! The “sociobiologist” given as the source for this amazing assertion was none other than Richard Dawkins! Other than the fact that Dawkins was never a “sociobiologist,” and especially not in 1972 when he published The Selfish Gene, the book from which the “totally and utterly wrong” quote was lifted, he actually praised Ardrey in other parts of the book. He never claimed that Ardrey and the rest were “totally and utterly wrong” because they defended the importance of innate human nature, in Ardrey’s case the overriding theme of all his work. Rather, Dawkins limited that claim to their support of group selection, a fact that Pinker never gets around to mentioning in The Blank Slate. Dropping Ardrey, Lorenz and the rest down the memory hole, Pinker went on to assert that none other than Wilson had been the real knight in shining armor who had brought down the Blank Slate. As readers who have followed this blog for a while are aware, the kicker came in 2012, in the form of E. O. Wilson’s The Social Conquest of Earth. In the crowning (and amusing) irony of this whole shabby affair, Wilson outed himself as more “totally and utterly wrong” than Ardrey and Lorenz by a long shot. He wholeheartedly embraced – group selection!

Which finally brings me to the latest episode in the readjustment of Blank Slate history. It turned up recently in the form of a PBS special entitled, E. O. Wilson – Of Ants and Men. It’s a testament to the fact that Pinker’s deification of Wilson has succeeded beyond his wildest dreams. The only problem is that now it appears he is in danger of being tossed on the garbage heap of history himself. You see, the editors at the impeccably politically correct PBS picked up on the fact that, at least according to Wilson, group selection is responsible for the innate wellsprings of selflessness, love of others, at least in the ingroup, altruism, and all the other endearing characteristics that make the hearts of the stalwart leftists who call the tune at PBS go pitter-pat. Pinker, on the other hand, for reasons that should be obvious by now, must continue to reject group selection, lest his freely concocted “history” become a laughing stock. To see how all this plays out circa 2015, let’s take a closer look at the video itself.

Before I begin, I wish to assure the reader that I have the highest respect for Wilson himself. He is a great scientist, and his publication of Sociobiology was an act of courage regardless of its subsequent exploitation by historical revisionists. As we shall see, he has condoned the portrayal of himself as the “knight in shining armor” invented by Pinker, but that is a forgivable lapse by an aging scientist who is no doubt flattered by the “legacy” manufactured for him.

With that, on to the video. It doesn’t take long for us to run into the first artifact of the Wilson legend. At the 3:45 minute mark, none other than Pinker himself appears, informing us that Wilson, “changed the intellectual landscape by challenging the taboo against discussing human nature.” He did no such thing. Ardrey had very effectively “challenged the taboo” in 1961 with his publication of African Genesis, and many others had challenged it in the subsequent years before publication of Sociobiology. Pinker’s statement isn’t even accurate in terms of U.S. scientists, as several of them in peripheral fields such as political science, had insisted on the existence and importance of human nature long before 1975, and others, like Tiger and Fox, although foreign born, had worked at U.S. universities. At the 4:10 mark Gregory Carr chimes in with the remarkable assertion that,

If someone develops a theory about human nature or biodiversity, and in common living rooms across the world, it seems like common sense, but in fact, a generation ago, we didn’t understand it, it tells you that that person, in this case Ed Wilson, has changed the way all of us view the world.

One can but shake one’s head at such egregious nonsense. In the first place, Wilson didn’t “develop a theory about human nature.” He simply repeated hypotheses that Darwin himself and many others since him had developed. There is nothing of any significance about human nature in any of his books that cannot also be found in the works of Ardrey. People “in common living rooms” a generation ago understood and accepted the concept of human nature perfectly well. The only ones who were still delusional about it at the time were the so-called “experts” in the behavioral sciences. Many of them were also just as aware as Wilson of the absurdity of the Blank Slate dogmas, but were too intimidated to challenge them.

My readers should be familiar by now with such attempts to inflate Wilson’s historical role, and the reasons for them. The tribe of behavioral scientists has never been able to bear the thought that their “science” was not “self-correcting,” and they would probably still be peddling the Blank Slate dogmas to this day if it weren’t for the “mere playwright,” Ardrey. All their attempts at historical obfuscation won’t alter that fact, and source material is there in abundance to prove it to anyone who has the patience to search it out and look at it. We first get an inkling of the real novelty in this particular PBS offering at around minute 53:15, when Wilson, referring to eusociality in ant colonies, remarks,

This capacity of an insect colony to act like a single super-organism became very important to me when I began to reconsider evolutionary theory later in my career. It made me wonder if natural selection could operate not only on individuals and their genes, but on the colony as a whole. That idea would create quite a stir when I published it, but that was much later.

Which brings us to the most amusing plot twist in this whole, sorry farce; PBS’ wholehearted embrace of group selection. Recall that Pinker’s whole rationalization for ignoring Ardrey was based on some good things Ardrey had to say about group selection in his third book, The Social Contract. The subject hardly ever came up in his interviews, and was certainly not the central theme of all his books, which, as noted above, was the existence and significance of human nature. Having used group selection to declare Ardrey an unperson, Pinker then elevated Wilson to the role of the “revolutionary” who was the “real destroyer” of the Blank Slate in his place. Wilson, in turn, in what must have seemed to Pinker a supreme act of ingratitude, embraced group selection more decisively than Ardrey ever thought of doing, making it a central and indispensable pillar of his theory regarding the evolution of eusociality. Here’s how the theme plays out in the video.

Wilson at 1:09:50

Humans don’t have to be taught to cooperate. We do it instinctively. Evolution has hardwired us for cooperation. That’s the key to eusociality.

Wilson at 1:13:40

Thinking on this remarkable fact (the evolution of eusociality) has made me reconsider in recent years the theory of natural selection and how it works in complex social animals.

Pinker at 1:18:50

Starting in the 1960s, a number of biologists realized that if you think rigorously about what natural selection does, it operates on replicators. Natural selection, Darwin’s theory, is the theory of what happens when you have an entity that can make a copy of itself, and so it’s very clear that the obvious target of selection in Darwin’s theory is the gene. That became close to a consensus among evolutionary biologists, but I think it’s fair to say that Ed Wilson was always ambivalent about that turn in evolutionary theory.

1:19:35 Wilson:

I never doubted that natural selection works on individual genes or that kin selection is a reality, but I could never accept that that is the whole story. Our group instincts, and those of other eusocial species, go far beyond the urge to protect our immediate kin. After a lifetime studying ant societies, it seemed to me that the group must also have an important role in evolution, whether or not its members are related to each other.

1:20:15 Jonathan Haidt:

So there’ve been a few revolutions in evolutionary thinking. One of them happened in the 1960s and ‘70s, and it was really captured in Dawkins famous book ‘The Selfish Gene,’ where if you just take the gene’s eye view, you have the simplest elements, and then you sort of build up from there, and that works great for most animals, but Ed was studying ants, and of course you can make the gene’s eye view work for ants, but when you’re studying ants, you don’t see the ant as the individual, you don’t see the ant as the organism, you see the colony or the hive as the entity that really matters.

At 1:20:55 Wilson finally spells it out:

Once you see a social insect colony as a superorganism, the idea that selection must work on the group as well as on the individual follows very naturally. This realization transformed my perspective on humanity, too. So I proposed an idea that goes all the way back to Darwin. It’s called group selection.

1:22:20 Haidt:

Ed was able to see group selection in action. It’s just so clear in the ants, the bees, the wasps, the termites and the humans.” Wilson: “The fact of group selection gives rise to what I call multilevel evolution, in which natural selection is operating both at the level of the individual and the level of the group… And that got Ed into one of the biggest debates of his career, over multilevel selection, or group selection.

1:23:20 Pinker:

Ed Wilson did not give up the idea that selection acted on groups, while most of his fellow biologists did. Then several decades later, revived that notion in a full-throated manifesto, which I think it would be an understatement to say that he did not convince his fellow biologists.

At this point, a picture of Wilson’s The Social Conquest of Earth, appears on the screen, shortly followed by stills of a scowling Richard Dawkins. Then we see an image of the cover of his The Selfish Gene. The film describes Dawkins furious attack on Wilson for daring to promote group selection.

1:24:10 Wilson:

The brouhaha over group selection has brought me into conflict with defenders of the old faith, like Richard Dawkins and many others who believe that ultimately the only thing that counts in the evolution of complex behavior, is the gene, the selfish gene. They believe the gene’s eye view of social evolution can explain all of our groupish behavior. I do not.

And finally, at 1:25, after Wilson notes Pinker is one of his opponents, Pinker reappears to deny the existence of group selection:

Most people would say that, if there’s a burning building, and your child is in one room and another child is in another room, then you are entitled to rescue your child first, right? There is a special bond between, say, parents and children. This is exactly what an evolutionary biologist would predict because any gene that would make you favor your child will have a copy of itself sitting in the body of that child. By rescuing your child the gene for rescuing children, so to speak, will be helping a copy of itself, and so those genes would proliferate in the population. Not just the extreme case of saving your child from a burning building but for being generous and loyal to your siblings, your very close cousins. The basis of tribalism, kinship, family feelings, have a perfectly sensible sensible evolutionary basis. (i.e., kin selection)

At this point one can imagine Pinker gazing sadly at the tattered remains of his whole, manufactured “history” of the Blank Slate lying about like a collapsed house of cards, faced with the bitter realization that he had created a monster. Wilson’s group selection schtick was just too good for PBS to pass up. I seriously doubt whether any of their editors really understand the subject well enough to come up with a reasoned opinion about it one way or the other. However, how can you turn your nose up at group selection if, as Wilson claims, it is responsible for altruism and all the other “good” aspects of our nature, whereas the types of selection favored by Pinker, not to mention Dawkins, are responsible for selfishness and all the other “bad” parts of our nature?

And what of Ardrey, whose good words about group selection no longer seem quite as “totally and utterly wrong” as Pinker suggested when he swept him under the historical rug? Have the editors at PBS ever even heard of him? We know very well that they have, and that they are also perfectly well aware of his historical significance, because they went to the trouble of devoting a significant amount of time to him in another recent special covering the discovery of Homo naledi. It took the form of a bitter denunciation of Ardrey for supporting the “Killer Ape Theory,” a term invented by the Blank Slaters of yore to ridicule the notion that pre-human apes hunted and killed during the evolutionary transition from ape to man. This revealing lapse demonstrated the continuing strength of the obsession with the “unperson” Ardrey, the man who was “totally and utterly wrong.” That obsession continues, not only among ancient, unrepentant Blank Slaters, but among behavioral scientists in general who happen to be old enough to know the truth about what happened in the 15 years before Wilson published Sociobiology, in spite of Pinker’s earnest attempt to turn that era into an historical “Blank Slate.”

Dragging in Ardrey was revealing because, in the first place, it was irrelevant in the context of a special about Homo naledi. As far as I know, no one has published any theories about the hunting behavior of that species one way or the other. It was revealing in the second place because of the absurdity of bringing up the “Killer Ape Theory” at all. That straw man was invented back in the 60s, when it was universally believed, even by Ardrey himself, that chimpanzees were, as Ashley Montagu put it, “non-aggressive vegetarians.” That notion, however, was demolished by Jane Goodall, who observed chimpanzees both hunting and killing, not to mention their capacity for extremely aggressive behavior. Today, few people like to mention the vicious, ad hominem attacks she was subjected to at the time for publishing those discoveries, although those attacks, too, are amply documented for anyone who cares to look for them. In the ensuing years, even the impeccably PC Scientific American has admitted the reality of hunting behavior in early man. In other words, the “Killer Ape Theory” debate has long been over, and Ardrey, who spelled out his ideas on the subject in his last book, The Hunting Hypothesis, won it hands down.

Why does all this matter? It seems to me the integrity of historical truth is worth defending in its own right. Beyond that, there is much to learn from the Blank Slate affair and its aftermath regarding the integrity of science itself. It is not invariably self-correcting. It can become derailed, and occasionally outsiders must play an indispensable role in putting it back on the tracks. Ideology can trump reason and common sense, and it did in the behavioral sciences for a period of more than half a century. Science is not infallible. In spite of that, it is still the best way of ferreting out the truth our species has managed to come up with so far. We can’t just turn our back on it, because, at least in my opinion, all of the alternatives are even worse. As we do science, however, it would behoove us to maintain a skeptical attitude and watch for signs of ideology leaking through the cracks.

I note in passing that excellent readings of all of Ardrey’s books are now available at Audible.com.

PBS Answers the Burning Question: What Does Robert Ardrey have to do with Homo naledi?

PBS just aired what’s billed as a NOVA/National Geographic Special entitled Dawn of Humanity on the stunning discovery of a trove of remains of an early human species dubbed Homo naledi in a South African cave. According to the blurb on its website,

NOVA and National Geographic present exclusive access to a unique discovery of ancient remains. Located in an almost inaccessible chamber deep in a South African cave, the site required recruiting a special team of experts slender enough to wriggle down a vertical, pitch-dark, seven-inch-wide passage. Most fossil discoveries of human relatives consist of just a handful of bones. But down in this hidden chamber, the team uncovered an unprecedented trove—so far, over 1,500 bones—with the potential to rewrite the story of our origins.

There’s nothing surprising about the fact that a story about Homo naledi appeared on NOVA. What’s really stunning, however, is its content. To all appearances it appears to have been supplied by an ancient Blank Slater who was frozen like a popsicle some time back in the early 70’s, and then had the good fortune to be thawed out like Rip van Winkle just in time to write the script for Dawn of Humanity. One can certainly quibble about his take on the significance of Homo naledi, but one thing is certain. He has favored us with a remarkable piece of historical source material.

It all starts innocently enough. We are introduced to Lee Berger, who headed the team that discovered Homo naledi. There are scenes of him strolling across the South African landscape with his two dogs, poking into limestone caverns of the sort where his nine year old son discovered the first fossil remains of Australopithecus sediba, like Homo naledi another creature with a small, ape-like brain that walked upright on two feet. He points to the places where the remains of several other individuals of that species were later found. Things continue in that sedate vein until suddenly, at minute 35:15, we are shaken out of our pleasant rut by the announcement that the abundance of the sediba remains,

…might help explain the Australopith’s transition into our genus, Homo. They might also prove or disprove a highly influential theory about the dawn of humanity. A theory inspired by the very first discovery of an Australopith fossil.

We are informed that the discovery referred to happened in 1924. The place was South Africa, and the discoverer was Prof. Raymond Dart of the University of Witswatersrand in Johannesburg. Miners had sent Dart a chunk of limestone in which was embedded the skull of a hominid child, different and more primitive than any previously discovered. He named the new species Australopithecus africanus. At that point, around minute 36:45, we get our first hint that PBS is about to administer a strong dose of propaganda. Quoting from the script,

Darwin and (Thomas Henry) Huxley predicted that our origins would be in Africa based on comparative anatomy. You know, they looked at the skeletons of chimps and gorillas and they looked at ours and they went, “Well they’re so close to us, and they’re more close than anything else, so it must have been in Africa.” And then the sort of second generation of evolutionary biologists shied away from that. They started to find fossils in Europe. They started to find fossils in Asia. And of course that tied in very nicely with the sort of racist, imperialistic thoughts of the day. They couldn’t abide the thought of it being in Africa.

I rather suspect that the reticence of this “second generation of evolutionary biologists” to immediately accept Dart’s “out of Africa” theory was due to the fact that they had based their life’s work on developing theories about the emergence of early man in the only places where fossil evidence had actually been found up to that time. It’s really not too hard to imagine that they may have been unenthusiastic about seeing all that work washed down the drain. Of course, we’ve long been familiar with the tendency of the “progressive” inmates at PBS to instantly seize on such understandable regrets and transmogrify them into something as sinister and criminal as “racist, imperialistic thoughts.” That’s old hat. What’s really surprising is that, in what follows, we are treated to a long-winded denunciation of the “Killer Ape Theory.” At 40:45 we learn,

Raymond Dart was building a theory about how the Australopiths, our apelike ancestors, became human. His ideas about the dawn of humanity were the touchstone for thinking about our origins for generations. In the 1940’s, more examples of Australopithecus began to be found, and a key site not only had fragments of Australopithecus, but also the bones of many other fossil animals. And Dart noted that these bones were broken in a special way. Dart became convinced they were weapons made by our primitive ancestors. Was this the key to what first made us human?

At this point, PBS has passed well beyond prissy comments about racism and imperialism to the full blown distortion of history. In the first place, Dart’s thinking never became a “touchstone” for anything, and certainly not for generations. He never even published anything about hunting behavior in early hominins until 1949, and what you might call his “seminal” paper on the subject, The Predatory Transition from Ape to Man, didn’t appear until 1953. Both papers were published in obscure venues, and both were largely ignored. Dart never claimed that bones that “were broken in a special way” were weapons. Rather, he claimed that the double-headed humerus, or upper foreleg bone, of a common type of antelope had been the weapon, and the bones that “were broken in a special way” were actually skulls with indentations that appeared to be the result of the use of that bone as a club.

In any case, next we learn that Dart had been a medic in World War I, and,

..had seen at first hand the barbarity humans are capable of. It made sense to him that the origins of humanity were steeped in blood. Raymond Dart’s experience in the World War may have colored his interpretation of what these bones and teeth meant. You know it gave him a view of sort of the dark side of humanity and the violence of humanity, and he came up with this idea that Australopithecus had figured out that bones and teeth were hard, and could be used as weapons to kill other animals. The sort of “Killer Ape Theory” of early humans. Dart believed that the more aggressive and adventurous of our ape-like ancestors abandoned their forest environment and moved into savannahs. There, they became hunters and predators. His theory, that this violent transformation gave rise to humanity soon found an audience far beyond the small world of paleoanthropology.

In fact, there is no evidence that all this psychobabble about World War I is anything but that. Dart’s claims were based on compelling statistical evidence, which is left unmentioned in the program. In the first place, a large and statistically anomalous number of the humerus bones proposed as weapons had been found in association with the africanus remains. Damage to the skulls of other animals supposedly inflicted with these weapons was not randomly located, but occurred far more often in locations where one would expect it to occur if it had been inflicted with a bludgeon or club. Dart’s interpretation of these facts has often been challenged, most prominently by C. K. Brain in his The Hunters or the Hunted?, published in 1981. Brain noted that twin puncture wounds found on an Australopith skull may well have been left by a leopard. Sure enough, the skull in question is featured on the program, and the puncture marks described as if they were incontrovertible proof that Dart’s apes had never hunted. As it happens, however, Brain is a careful scientist, and never maintained anything of the sort. Indeed, in The Hunters or the Hunted? he describes in detail two important objections to the leopard theory, and while he certainly challenged Dart’s theories, he never suggested that they had been incontrovertibly disproved. Predictably, these facts are left unmentioned in the program.

At this point I started wondering why on earth PBS would start laying on such thick dollops of propaganda to begin with. Possible hunting in A. africanus wasn’t really germane to the behavior of a newly discovered species like Homo naledi, the apparent theme of the show, nor to that of Australopithecus sediba, for that matter. I wasn’t left hanging for long. At that point, the ancient Blank Slate Rip van Winkle the program had been channeling all along tipped his hand. After all these years, he had hardly forgotten the shame and embarrassment he and his fellow “men of science” had experienced at the hand of a certain playwright by the name of Robert Ardrey! Suddenly, at about the 42:50 point, the screen is filled with Ardrey’s image. Then we see in quick succession images of two Life magazine covers and one of Penthouse, all three of which prominently announce articles he had written. The narrative continues,

In the 1950’s there was a drama critic and playwright names Robert Ardrey, who became very interested in human origins, and he went to Africa and spoke with Raymond Dart. And Robert Ardrey, being a dramatist, could write like anything, and he wrote this amazing book published in 1961 called African Genesis (dramatic drumbeat). African Genesis became a pop-science publishing sensation of the early 1960s. Ardrey’s ideas, building on those of Raymond Dart, helped frame public debate about the dawn of humanity for the next 20 years. (Potts cuts in) The very first sentence in that book; I remember it because I read it as a teenager and was enthralled by it, “Not in innocence, and not in Asia, was mankind born.” And in that one sentence he encapsulated Raymond Dart’s ideas, that it was an African genesis, and that where we came from was not from an innocent creature (dramatic drumroll), but from the most violent of killer apes.

At this point we’re treated to one of the favorite gimmicks of the Blank Slaters of yore. The program segs to scenes from Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. We are assured that Kubrick was influenced by Ardrey, and then shown the familiar opening scene, with an ape-man smashing everything in sight with a bone wielded as a club. The only problem is that Ardrey didn’t write the script for the movie. We find the same trick in that invaluable little piece of historical source material, Man and Aggression, a collection of Blank Slater rants published in 1968 and edited by Ashley Montagu. Most of the attacks are directed at Ardrey and Konrad Lorenz, but William Golding, author of Lord of the Flies, is thrown in for comic effect in the same fashion as Kubrick.

Next, at about 45:45, there is a schtick about how tartar from sediba’s teeth was examined, revealing that it contained phytoliths, microscopic particles of silica that are found in some plant tissues. At 48:15 the narrative continues,

Here, at last, is evidence that will help support or disprove Dart’s theory… The tooth evidence from sediba indicates a diet very similar to todays chimpanzees. While they may have eaten some meat, there’s little to back up Raymond Dart’s theory that they were killer apes.

Here one can but roll one’s eyes. The plant evidence in sediba’s teeth hardly indicates that its consumption of meat was as the same as, not to mention greater or less than, that of chimpanzees. Here, too, we find revealed the remarkably anachronistic nature of this whole production. Left unmentioned is that fact that chimpanzees are, after all, killer apes, too. They organize hunting parties with the intention of killing and eating other species, and they also carry out organized attacks on other chimpanzees, often killing them in the process as well. None of this is mentioned in the program. Indeed, when Jane Goodall first observed and reported the behavior referred to she was furiously denounced and subjected to incredibly demeaning ad hominem attacks by the Blank Slaters. It’s as if none of this ever happened, and the program is frozen in time back around 1975. The rest consists mainly of pleasantries about the recovery of the Homo naledi remains.

In reality, the “killer ape theory” that we have just seen dusted off and trotted out for our benefit is largely a Blank Slater propaganda myth. Modern apes kill, and when they kill they are certainly violent. They can, therefore, be accurately described as violent killer apes. The “killer ape” of the Blank Slaters, however, is a nightmare figment of their imagination – a furious, violent creature constantly attacking everything around it, as so gaudily portrayed in Stanley Kubrick’s film. Nothing in any of Ardrey’s books even comes close to a description of such psychopathic B movie monsters.

The very magazine covers mentioned above, shown as the narrator lays on the propaganda about killer apes, are revealing in themselves. I happen to have copies of all three of them, and none of the articles by Ardrey they contain has the least thing to say about the “killer ape theory.” Instead, they all deal in one way or another with the real theme of all Ardrey’s work; the existence of innate human nature. And that, I strongly suspect, is the real reason the program even mentions Ardrey.

All appearances to the contrary in Dawn of Humanity, the debate about the “hunting hypothesis” is now over for all practical purposes. It has been decided in favor of Ardrey. Clear marks of butchering have been found on bones dated to more than 3 million years before the present. It has been suggested that the bones were scavenged from the kills of other predators, but the idea that it never occurred to early hominins to hunt between that time and half a million to a million years before the present, a period during which early man clearly began using stone tipped and fire-hardened hunting spears, is nonsense. It is doubly nonsense in view of the observed hunting behavior of chimpanzees. Even the impeccably politically correct Scientific American admitted as much in an article entitled Rise of the Human Predator, that appeared in the April 2014 issue. More remarkable still, in a PBS series entitled Becoming Human that aired in 2009, we were informed that,

Homo erectus probably hunted with close-quarters weapons, with spears that were thrown at animals from a short distance, clubs, thrown rocks, weapons like that. They weren’t using long distance projectile weapons that we know of.

The Homo erectus hunt was simple but effective. It fed not just their larger brains, but the growing complexity of that early human society.

Why, then, this grotesque anachronism, this latter day program frozen in time in the early 1970’s? As I mentioned earlier, the Blank Slaters have forgotten nothing, and forgiven nothing. They know that the reason for Ardrey’s enormous influence wasn’t the “killer ape theory.” Rather, the constant theme of all Ardrey’s work was his insistence on the existence of innate human nature. Virtually all of the “men of science” in the behavioral sciences at the time his books began appearing, at least in the United States, firmly supported the Blank Slate orthodoxy, insisted that virtually all human behavior was a result of learning and culture, and denied the existence of any such thing as innate behavioral traits in human beings. Ardrey was right, and they were all dead wrong. A “mere playwright” had shamed them and exposed them for the charlatans they were.

Today books and articles about innate human behavior, and its analogs in other animals, roll off the presses as if the subject had never been the least bit controversial. The Blank Slate orthodoxy has been smashed, and the one man whose writings were far and away the most influential weapon in smashing it was Robert Ardrey. As for the “men of science,” they are engaged in a game of bowdlerizing history to hide this inconvenient truth. The usual tactic is to ignore Ardrey, elevating some pretender to the role of “slayer of the Blank Slate.” If he is mentioned at all, it is only to briefly note, after the fashion of Steven Pinker, that he was “totally and utterly wrong” based on some alleged inaccuracy in one of his books that had nothing to do with the overall theme. That’s why I said that artifacts like Dawn of Humanity are valuable because of their historical interest at the beginning of this post. For such remarkable anachronisms to even appear, someone has to be seriously out of step with the official line. It has to be someone who knows just how significant and influential Ardrey really was, a fact demonstrated by the very magazine covers that appear on the program. Insignificant nobodies weren’t invited to write articles for Life magazine in the late 60’s and early 70’s, not to mention Penthouse, and pieces by Ardrey can be found in many other familiar magazines of the day. Furthermore, that “somebody” has to be so bitter about Ardrey’s demolition of his precious Blank Slate dogmas that his hatred boils to the surface, revealing itself in such remarkable productions as the one described here. When that happens we occasionally learn something about the Blank Slate debacle that the “men of science” would prefer to leave swept under the rug. A little truth manages to leak out around the edges. This time the truth happened to touch on the real historical role of a man named Robert Ardrey.

Nature vs. Nurture at the Movies: Hollywood Turns on the Blank Slate

If Hollywood is any guide, we can put a fork in the Blank Slate. I refer, of course, to the delusional orthodoxy that was enforced by the “Men of Science” in the behavioral sciences for more than half a century, according to which there is no such thing as human nature. Consider, for example, the movie Divergent. It belongs to the dystopian genre beloved of American audiences, and is set in post-apocalyptic Chicago. A semblance of order has been restored by arranging the surviving population into five factions based on what the evolutionary psychologists might call their innate predispositions. They include Candor, whose supreme values are honesty and trustworthiness, and from whose ranks come the legal scholars and lawyers. The brave and daring are assigned to the Dauntless faction, and become the defenders of the little city-state. At the opposite extreme is Amity, the home of those who value kindness, forgiveness and trust, and whose summum bonum is peace. Their admiration for self-reliance suits them best for the agricultural chores. Next comes Abnegation, composed of the natural do-gooders of society. So selfless that they can only bear to look in a mirror for a few seconds, they are deemed so incorruptible that they are entrusted with the leadership and government of the city. Finally, the intelligent and curious are assigned to the Erudite faction. They fill such roles as doctors, scientists, and record-keepers. They are also responsible for technological advances, which include special “serums,” some of which are identified with particular factions. One of these is a “simulation serum,” used to induce imaginary scenarios that test a subject’s aptitude for the various factions.

As it happens, the simulation serum doesn’t always work. When the heroine, Tris, takes the test, she discovers that she can “finesse” the simulation. She is a rare instance of an individual whose nature does not uniquely qualify her for any faction, but who is adaptable enough to fit adequately into several of them. In other words, she is a “Divergent,” and as such, a free thinker and a dire threat to anyone who might just happen to have plans to misuse the serums to gain absolute control over the city.

Alas, there’s trouble in paradise. The “factions” are groups, and where there are groups, there are ingroups and outgroups. Sure enough, each “in-faction” has its own “out-faction.” This aspect of the plot is introduced matter-of-factly, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. And, of course, since it can be assumed that the audience will consist largely of the species Homo sapiens, it is. Most of us, with the exception of a few aging behavioral scientists, are familiar with the fact that it is our nature to apply different versions of morality depending on whether we are dealing with one of “us” or one of the “others.” It turns out that Abnegation is the outgroup of Erudite, who consider them selfish poseurs, and weak and cowardly to boot. That being the case, it follows that Abnegation is completely unsuited to run the government of Chicago or any other post-apocalyptic city state. That role should belong to Erudite.

Which brings us, of course, to the “bad guy.” You’ll never guess who the bad guy is, so I’ll just spill the beans. It’s none other than Kate Winslet! She plays the cold and nefarious Erudite leader Jeanine Matthews. These smarties are planning to overthrow Abnegation and seize control for themselves with the aid of the martial Dauntless, whose members have been conveniently mind-controlled with the aid of one of Erudite’s serums. Eventually, Jeanine unmasks Tris and her amorous partner, Four, as Divergents. And with them in her power, she treats them to a remarkable soliloquy, which nearly caused me to choke on my butter-slathered popcorn. Once Erudite is in the saddle, she explains, they will eliminate human nature. Using a combination of re-education a la Joseph Stalin and mind control drugs, all citizens will become latter day versions of Homo sovieticus, perfectly adapted to fit into the Brave New World planned by the Erudites. The utopia envisioned by generations of Blank Slaters will be realized at last!

There’s no need for me to reveal any more of the plot. It’s a very entertaining movie so, by all means, see it yourself. Suffice it to say that, if Hollywood now associates the denial of human nature with evil bad guys, then the Blank Slate must be stone cold dead. Or at least it is with the exception of a few ancient Blank Slater bats still hanging in the more dark and obscure belfries of academia.

For the benefit of the history buffs among my readers, I note in passing that Hollywood never quite succumbed to Gleichschaltung. They were always just a bit out of step, even in the heyday of the Blank Slate orthodoxy. Consider, for example, Sam Peckinpah’s 1971 movie Straw Dogs. It was directly inspired by the work of none other than that greatest of bête noires of the Blank Slaters, Robert Ardrey. The first to taste of the forbidden fruit was Strother Martin, best known for his portrayal of the sadistic “Captain” in Cool Hand Luke (“What we have here is a failure to communicate”). He, in turn, passed on Ardrey’s African Genesis to Peckinpah, with the remark that the two seemed to share similar attitudes about violence in human beings. Peckinpah was fascinated, and later said,

Robert Ardrey is a writer I admire tremendously. I read him after Wild Bunch and have reread his books since because Ardrey really knows where it’s at, Baby. Man is violent by nature, and we have to learn to live with it and control it if we are to survive.

That statement, rough around the edges though it is, actually shows more insight into the thought of Ardrey than that revealed by about 99.9% of the learned book reviewers and “Men of Science” who have deigned to comment on his work in the ensuing 45 years. Specifically, Peckinpah understood that Ardrey was no “genetic determinist,” and that he believed that aggressive human predispositions could be controlled by environment, or “culture.” As it happens, that is a theme he elaborated on repeatedly in every one of his books. The theme of Straw Dogs was taken directly out of The Territorial Imperative. According to Ardrey,

There is a law of territorial behavior as true of the single roebuck defending his private estate as it is of a band of howling monkeys defending its domain held in common. Huxley long ago observed that any territory is like a rubber disc: the tighter it is compressed, the more powerful will be the pressure outward to spring it back into shape. A proprietor’s confidence is at its peak in the heartland, as is an intruder’s at its lowest. Here the proprietor will fight hardest, chase fastest.

In Straw Dogs, Peckinpah’s diminutive hero, timid mathematician David Sumner, played by Dustin Hoffman, travels from the sheltered campus of an American university to be with his young wife, Amy, in her native village in England. To make a long story short, she is raped by three of the locals. Eventually, these muscular miscreants are joined by other townspeople in besieging Sumner in his territory, his house, in the mistaken belief that he is knowingly harboring a murderer. Ardrey’s territorial boost takes over with a vengeance, and Sumner draws on unimagined reserves of strength, courage, and resourcefulness to annihilate the attackers one by one. As badly behind the PC curve as any Disney film, Hollywood eventually repented and in 2000 churned out an alternative version of Straw Dogs, in which all the violent behavior was “learned.” By then, however, getting in step meant getting out of step. Even the Public Broadcasting Network had given the Blank Slate the heave ho years earlier.

Straw Dogs was hardly the first time Hollywood took up the subject of nature versus nurture. For those whose tastes run more to the intellectual and profound, I have attached a short film below dealing with that theme that predates Peckinpah by almost a quarter of a century.

“Utterly Wrong” Robert Ardrey Vindicated Again. “Scientific American” Embraces the “Hunting Hypothesis”

The dubious claim that early man never engaged in anything so politically incorrect as hunting was part and parcel of the Blank Slate. In fact, you can almost date its collapse from the time that abashed admissions that he did, in fact, hunt began appearing in the scientific and popular literature. As recently as 1997, for example, British journalist Brian Deer subjected Jane Goodall, no less, to some grossly sexist ridicule as an ignorant “secretary” and “waitress,” because she had dared to notice that chimpanzees hunt and eat meat, and inform the world about it. In the same year, the Pubic Broadcasting Network aired a series entitled “In Search of Human Origins,” which featured the palpably ludicrous claim that early man satisfied the need for meat to fuel his big brain by duking it out with the hyenas and vultures as a “highly successful scavenger.” The “scavenger” schtick never really passed the “Ho Ho” test, and PBS heaved it overboard in its “Becoming Human” series in 2009, in which viewers learned that,

Homo erectus probably hunted with close-quarters weapons, with spears that were thrown at animals from a short distance, clubs, thrown rocks, weapons like that. They weren’t using long distance projectile weapons that we know of.

The Homo erectus hunt was simple but effective. It fed not just their larger brains, but the growing complexity of that early human society.

This about face was managed without cracking the faintest smile, or the faintest hint that the network had imposed on the credulity of its audience with the “scavenger” routine just over a decade earlier. Of course, there was also not the faintest mention of Robert Ardrey, who had insisted on the hunting proclivities of early man in his book, The Hunting Hypothesis, published in 1976. By this time, of course, Ardrey had already been reduced to an unperson by the “men of science” in works such as Steven Pinker’s ludicrous revision of history, The Blank Slate. Unlike those who so shamelessly dismiss his legacy today, Ardrey was actually possessed of what H. L. Mencken used to refer to as “common decency.” Instead of burying the contributions of significant thinkers in the past, he had a remarkable facility for digging them up. His works are full of references to such remarkable but little known geniuses as Eugene Marais, Raymond Dart, Henry Eliot Howard, and Carveth Read.

In the case of Read, for example, instead of following the modern practice of declaring him “totally and utterly wrong” and then proceeding to pirate his ideas, he insisted on his contribution as one of the first, if not the first, to suggest a hunting transition from ape to man in his book, The Origin of Man and His Superstitions.” Read coined the term “Lycopithecus” for his hypothesized hunting apes, noting the similarities in social behavior between wolves and man, and wrote,

Moreover, when our ape first pursued game, especially big game (not being by ancient adaptation in structure and instinct a carnivore), he may have been, and probably was, incapable of killing enough prey single-handed; and, if so, he will have profited by becoming both social and cooperative as a hunter, like the wolves and dogs – in short, a sort of wolf-ape (Lycopithecus).

…the less our ancestor in his new career trusted to trees the better for him. Such simple strategy (hunting from trees) could not make him a dominant animal throughout the world; nothing could do this but the gradual attainment of erect gait adapted to running down his prey.

Watch PBS’s Becoming Human series and you’ll see how Read’s hypothesis about the “attainment of erect gait adapted to running down prey” was “rediscovered” a little under a hundred years later.

Fast forward another five years, and we find ourselves treated to yet another vindication of Ardrey and Read, from no less than the relentlessly politically correct Scientific American! In an article shockingly entitled, Rise of the Human Predator, we are treated to an epiphany that would certainly have amused Ardrey, and caused the ancient Blank Slaters to swallow their gum. If a nail in the coffin of the Blank Slate’s bitter resistance to the Hunting Hypothesis were needed, this would definitely qualify. Here’s the byline:

For decades researchers have been locked in debate over how and when hunting began and how big a role it played in human evolution. Recent analyses of human anatomy, stone tools and animal bones are helping to fill in the details of this game-changing shift in subsistence strategy. This evidence indicates that hunting evolved far earlier than some scholars had envisioned – and profoundly impacted subsequent human evolution.

Stunning, really! Ardrey said almost exactly the same things in The Hunting Hypothesis back in 1976. Of course, there is nothing as “shy-making” as one of novelist Evelyn Waugh’s “bright young things” might have put it, as any mention of him, nor of Carveth Read. Nor, for that matter, in spite of citing evidence of hunting going back 1.8 million years, could the author bring himself to mention Raymond Dart, whose statistical evidence for hunting by Australopithecus africanus was first ignored, then subjected to a lame “refutation” by C. K. Brain, but who is now being hailed as the “Father of Cave Taphonomy.”

Somehow, I’m not surprised.