Evolutionary psychology: "fashionable ideology" or "new foundation"?

human nature- was reading Fromm essay re: Marx vs Freud- human behaviour conditioned by social environment or social environment reflection of inherent cognitive structures-

Steven Rose seems to accept the basic premise of evolutionary psychology. He writes: "The declared aim of evolutionary psychology is to provide explanations for the patterns of human activity and the forms of organisation of human society which take into account the fact that humans are animals and, like all other currently living organisms, are the present-day products of some four billion years of evolution. So far so good."13 Rose continues: "Because humans are as subject as any other organism to evolutionary processes, we should therefore expect to find such adaptations among our own kind just as much as amongst the others that we study. Individual aspects of being human -- from our body shape to our eyes and capacity for binocular vision -- are clearly evolved features and fit us to the environment in which we live."14

However, the Roses object to using this adaptationist approach to illuminate the psychological mechanisms that underpin human social behaviour. This is because, the Roses claim, not enough is known about the conditions under which our ancestors evolved to make claims about the problems that they faced, or to test whether or not particular features of human psychology are adaptations. The Roses also claim that the period of pre-history that evolutionary psychologists focus upon -- the Pleistocene or 'Stone Age' -- is the wrong one because there has been sufficient time since the end of the Pleistocene for significant evolutionary change in the design of the human mind. In addition, the Roses argue that evolutionary psychology's claims about universal features of human social psychology are contradicted by cultural and historical variability, and neglect the role of emotion in human mental life. Finally, the Roses use Daly and Wilson's research on step-parents to exemplify what they see as the empirical short-comings of evolutionary psychology. This review will look at each of these 'arguments against evolutionary psychology' in turn.

[...]

The Roses' third argument against evolutionary psychology is that cultural and historical variability in cultural forms refutes the claim that humans share a universal, species-typical psychology. Referring to historically-recent changes in female mate-preferences, levels of violence, and fecundity in various hunter-gatherer populations, Steven Rose remarks "Each of these societies has undergone rapid economic, technological and social change in the last decade. What has happened to the evolutionary psychology predictions? Why have these assumed human universals suddenly failed to operate?"26

but what's this?

Nevertheless, mud sticks, and so in the short term the Roses will no doubt succeed in misleading the public and the media about evolutionary psychology. But, fortunately, the Roses have had little effect on the current research programme of evolutionary psychology, and in the long term seem destined to have no effect whatsoever.56 Darwin's theory of evolution has revolutionised our understanding of the natural world. And by placing psychology on "a new foundation", Darwin's theory is set to revolutionise our understanding of ourselves, and of our place in that world. Despite their best efforts, the Roses will not be able to delay this revolution.

cock.