What comes to mind when we think about science? For many, it’s green vials in chemistry labs, white lab coats and goggles, and memories of botched biology practicals in which various organs and organisms are at the mercy of 16-year-olds with scalpels.
“Despite my own academic leanings towards the humanities, I look back on those days of secondary school science quite fondly”
Despite my academic leanings towards the humanities, I look back on those days of secondary school science fondly. It was comforting to feel that, after a long day of English or French, in which something might be said any number of ways, we could be learning something concrete. Filled with heady confidence (and, let’s be honest, likely unsafe levels of chemicals) and perched on those wooden stools, we prepared to dissect, label, and explain away everything men had encountered.
An exercise at once liberatory and restrictive, the natural world is reduced to a series of truisms as hearts, plants, gills, and stomata alike are splayed out in black and white, bearing labels. When people feel confused, it can be philosophy grounded in this biology that reassures. If testosterone and aggression go to ‘men’ just as pollen to ‘bee’ and oxygen to ‘red-blood-cell’, then certain men can feel assured of their place in the social ladder – or at least in their ability to climb it.
So, what happens when scientising the natural world becomes a soul-searching exercise for the lost and disconsolate individual? I will explore this through aspects of Jordan B Peterson’s philosophies. How can science (paradoxically) defer the literal and deny the tangled reality of human behaviours and relationships? Relying on a dogmatic loyalty to the sciences and faith in the perfecting powers of evolution, Peterson endorses extreme individualism and independence. For those of you already acquainted with Peterson’s flirtations with evolutionary psychology, I can only apologise; for those of you who have thus far escaped his crustacean-centred explanations, I shall provide a summary:
Peterson’s logic follows that natural hierarchies within lobster communities can serve as a pre-cultural prototype for some aspects of human behaviour. Male lobsters use aggression to ensure access to scarce resources. More aggressive lobsters have more serotonin, and thus the lobsters that lose fights are framed as ‘depressed’. The logic follows that if, as a human male, you’re feeling down in the dumps, then the ‘natural’ solution is to assert social dominance. “Stand up straight with your shoulders back” is an oft-quoted platitude related to an assertion of power and masculinity. Essentially, it’s all on you, bucko.
“Peterson’s logic follows that natural hierarchies within lobster communities can serve as a pre-cultural prototype for some aspects of human behaviour”
Peterson’s ‘scientific’ evidence rests on the assumptions that:
- Humans and lobsters are genetically similar enough to be considered to mirror one another’s social hierarchies
- Lobster hierarchies developed as the perfect adaptation to an environment of ‘chaos’
- What is ‘natural’ is fundamentally good (for humans)
Assumption 1: Humans and lobsters are genetically similar enough to be considered to mirror one another’s social hierarchies
The short answer to this is that all species can arguably be traced back to the elusive LUCA (last universal common ancestor), and the last time I checked, we weren’t instigating a return to nature by emulating the mating patterns of seahorses or dancing rituals of bees. The lobster is one creature out of trillions - all of which are distantly related to the first lifeforms on Earth. Known species only represent around 14% of land and 9% of oceanic organisms, and many more species are disappearing faster than we can count them due to the climate crisis. The lobster is a wholly insignificant drop in the taxonomic bucket.
So why does Peterson’s logic prove so persuasive? With a bestseller book and Youtube videos garnering millions of views, the man has struck a nerve. I think the power of Peterson’s argument comes in part from his misleading explanation (or innocent misunderstanding) of the phylogenetic tree. When Peterson asserts that human beings “divulged” from lobsters, he implies that humans have evolved from lobsters which could explain similar behaviour, which is simply untrue. Vertebrates (which would, 500 million years later, include homo sapiens) diverged from invertebrates (which would, 150 million years later, include lobsters) approximately 500 million years ago. Human and lobster populations have since had absolutely nothing to do with each other since then, humans have been too busy coming up with stuff like the free market (or defending ourselves from the free market) whilst lobsters have been scuttling around the seafloor. Besides human-lobster interactions of a culinary nature - in which I’m not sure there’s much cultural exchange seeing as the lobster is likely being dismantled or boiled alive - we don’t have an especially intimate relationship.
Peterson’s narrative of human-lobster similarities is no more than a narcissistic construction of the world in his image. Jordan Peterson and his fans alike would do well to heed the advice of anthropologist, De Waal who states: “humanity’s know-thyself mission can be understood only in the context of the stained glasses through which they stare in nature’s mirror”.
“Evolution is not directional. We’re not Pokemon.”
Assumption 2: Lobster hierarchies developed as the perfect adaptation to an environment of ‘chaos’
Evolution is far from an exact science. To understand better, we need to purge ourselves of the sense that the process of speciation is progressive in the same way as a ‘power up’: evolution is not directional. We’re not Pokemon. Evolutionary adaptations result from random genetic changes which happen to be advantageous – this is how we end up with the weird and wonderful biodiversity seen in the natural world. Fundamentally: there is no perfect adaptation and no such thing as a species perfectly adapted to its environment because environments are ever-changing. You might get caked in sweat dancing in Rumboogie, but on frosty Winter mornings, you turn up to lectures with a runny nose and your hands half blue: there is a range of temperatures humans can be exposed to, not some absolute optimal value.
Accordingly, lobster hierarchies have developed to deal with resource scarcity at the bottom of the ocean through male aggression and dominance, but there are multiple suitable adaptations within any given environment – cooperation and egalitarianism may work just as well – studies of human social organisation point to both egalitarianism and hierarchy in past populations.
Assumption 3: What is natural is inherently ‘good’
So what are the consequences for framing the answers to our problems as inscribed within the phylogenetic tree? Seeking answers within the flesh and blood of creatures means what is perceived as the natural world becomes a playground for finding ‘hidden truths’ (or just a ‘playground’ more literally if you are rich enough to launch a rocket into space). Such a self-serving attitude lends itself to violence as answers become more elusive. What happens when you hand 16-year-olds a scalpel and tell them the solution to the chaos in their world is hidden deep within the DNA of the body laid before them?
Nature is also, fundamentally, shaped by human beings. Plastic found in some of the most remote areas in the world, microplastics in our own bodies, as well as dramatic changes to the structure of global ecosystems means that there is no facet of the natural world which has not been touched by us. Any attempts to find yourself in some convoluted pursuit of ancestral origins is flawed from the beginning.
To hand over the search for meaning and validation to the scientific endeavour is wrong within this framework, only functions to (distractingly) place the blame for structural issues on the shoulders of individuals. When isolation and social disruption (which as we have all found out recently are structural and outside of our control) are the biggest predictors of mental health disorders, it is crucial that we stand up straight with our shoulders back but only for the sake of being a good place to cry on when our friends are in need.
