“Dr Abed both misstates the arguments of those of us who are critical of the claims of evolutionary psychology and is over-anxious to absolve its protagonists from charges of biological determinism. First, neither Professor Hilary Rose nor I, as the two editors of Alas, Poor Darwin (Reference Rose and RoseRose & Rose, 2000), are evolutionary biologists. I am a neuroscientist whose research interest lies primarily in learning and memory and she is a sociologist of science. No neuroscientist could ever suggest that the mind was a Lockeian tabula rasa. As all my own writings make clear, any understanding of the human mind and brain needs to locate its structure and workings in the context of evolution and development, as well as social, cultural and technological history. For that matter, nothing the population geneticist Richard Lewontin has ever written could, to my knowledge, justify Abed's assertion concerning him and I would challenge Abed to find any quote which would support his assertion.

“In terms of evolutionary psychological theory, I dispute the claim made most strongly by evolutionary psychology's spokespeople that the ‘architecture’ of the human mind was laid down in the Pleistocene and there has not been evolutionary time since for any major change to occur. Cavalli-Sforza (Reference Cavalli-Sforza2000), for one, has recently surveyed the substantial evidence of significant post-Pleistocene genetic change under selection pressures.

“Returning to Dr Abed's reply to Dr Lucas, if it is not ‘biologically deterministic’ to claim that humans possess innate ‘cheat detector’ modules or that men are innately programmed to prefer sex with younger women with specific hip : waist ratios, and women sex with older men — preferably with symmetrically shaped bodies which guarantee better orgasms — I am not sure what is. And I cannot believe that Abed quotes as a respectable source Thornhill & Palmer's (Reference Thornhill and Palmer2000) claim that rape is an evolutionarily adaptive male strategy — that melange of scorpion fly data and human anecdote, so broadly condemned by the academic community.

“Finally, Abed parrots the attack made in Cosmides and Tooby's straw-person invention of what they call the ‘standard social science model’ that they argue dominates sociology. As Hilary Rose points out in Alas, Poor Darwin, there is little in European sociology which conforms to such a caricature. What is at stake is the autonomy of the social sciences as research fields from the imperialistic claims of an overly reductive biology at the hands of these new evolutionary fundamentalists. If evolutionary psychology were, as Abed claims, a ‘hypothesis-driven empirical science’, there would be little to complain about. Indeed, both biologists and social scientists should welcome it. The problem is that what currently passes for evolutionary psychology is little more than an untestable bunch of anecdotes based upon a priori ideological convictions.”