Unfit for Purpose

May 18, 2020
Though Hart (The Life of Poo), a biologist and science journalist, explains the goal for his rambling book clearly enough, the underlying evolutionary premise he offers is flawed. He notes that “this book is about mismatches between evolutionary past and the environment we have created” but fails to mention what biologists understand very well: evolution never yields a perfect match between organisms and their environment. Hart devotes the bulk of the text to supposedly evolution-related problems such as stress, obesity, violence, addiction, and mental health issues, providing for each some brief biological background, a superficial analysis of current research, and a concluding note that the situation is too complex for any simple solution. At times, Hart’s comments come across as gratuitous and unfair, as when discussing geneticist James Neel, who proposed a “thrifty gene” that promoted fat and carbohydrates conservation in ancient hunter-gatherers. Hart begins by mentioning accusations—unrelated to his subject—that Neel deliberately initiated a measles epidemic among a group of indigenous people in the Amazon, only to acknowledge that the accusation was later fully discredited. The few kernels of insight presented in this scattered survey are not worth the work of winnowing them from the large amount of chaff.

June 1, 2020
How evolution has failed to equip human beings for the 21st century. For readers puzzled about why they feel overworked, anxious, depressed, and mentally and physically worn down, Hart, an entomologist and science broadcaster, has an interesting hypothesis. The culprit may be a "mismatch between the world in which we evolved and the world in which we now find ourselves." Many of the issues the author examines in this scientifically sophisticated but (mostly) readable, accessible treatise--gut health, chronic obesity, internet-induced social dysfunctions, media violence's effect on our brains, stress overload, hyperaddictive personality disorders--have all been covered in various ways. What makes Hart's approach intriguing is his framing of our modern-day ills as simple biological deficiencies: We have created a world that regularly pushes us beyond our naturally given physical and psychological limits. "Most worryingly," he writes, "despite a very pressing need to solve the many environmental problems we have caused, evolution has left us selfish and without any sensible notion of the future." What can we do about this discrepancy between our capacities as evolved beings and the challenges of the modern world? That's a more uncertain matter. One area in which Hart's study hits home is his terrifying hypothetical description of "microstressors" and how they can slowly kill us in barely noticeable ways. Less original--even when backed by peer-reviewed research from the scientific community--are the author's assessments of how our brains react to the increasingly hyperviolent images the media constantly feeds us. Hart is unconvincing in his discussion of the long debatable idea that we're becoming a more violent society and that those who experience greater exposure to violent images will be more prone to violence in real life. So what side of human nature will win out--our innate capacity for cooperation or our natural tendency toward selfishness? For Hart, it's a toss-up. An intermittently fascinating but inconclusive pop-science study.

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