Let me through - I'm a Sustainability Officer!

Sorry Andrew, but what is (sic)-able about Evolutionary Psychology? It's a fairly mainstream discipline that seeks to explain aspects of behaviour and cognition (usually human but animals too) that can be attributable to genetics and therefore subject to modification by evolution. Altruism is the poster child. As a discipline it's riddled with tautologies and useless ad hoc explanations that could easily be inverted with equal plausibility. But that's common to most philosophy. I don't think it makes the endeavour worthless or (sic)-able.

Ross Aitken

Er, OK. So sociobiology is both dodgy science and bad philosophy - but it's worth doing anyway. Here's a radical idea. How about doing something that isn't dodgy science and bad philosophy? If you want to end up somewhere useful, it might be a better place to start from.

How so, Ross?

I think it's just as valid to try to explain the emergence of altruism as it is to explain the colour of a moth's wings

This one will run and run.

As a 63 year old American, it pains me to see how far the Brits have fallen. Where once it was Churchill and Thatcher leading a self-reliant, strong society, now I see a PC-crazed society with creeping Big Brotherism. The odd thing is that there doesn't seem as though much resistance is being mobilized against this sort of thing.  It's sad, really.

J. Mulis

Mr Mulis, I think the British way of dealing with fanatics is through "passive resistance": ignore them until they collapse under the weight of their own contradictions.

And this may well be happening before our eyes. Roll on the discrimination lawsuits, I say: it'll be like the early Christians climbing over the Coliseum wall to throw themselves under Lions.

Where can I buy a ticket? ®