The Evolution of Cats and Dogs

What is a 'theory'? What does this word even mean? A podcast I particularly enjoy, and recommend to my readers, is the DarkHorse podcast hosted by Bret Weinstein and his wife Heather Heying, in which they cover a wide range of topics, focussing particularly on evolutionary theory, and on human and animal biology in the era of Covid 19. Although I haven't seen all of the podcasts, I find all the talks I've seen fascinating and stimulating. (They will upload their latest podcast later today American time by the way.) But I don't always agree with everything they say. In the sixteenth of the series, Bret presents a maverick opinion concerning the way, in his view, people misuse the word 'theory'. In Bret's view, the word 'theory' should be applied to explanations for data that have the solid backing of a scientific and general consensus. Thus we can speak of the Theory of Relativity because all physicists and most lay people believe in this theory; we can't speak of a Theory of Phlogiston because chemists have long since discarded it. (This is not to say that it wasn't once a theory. It was indeed but went extinct in the second half of the eighteenth century.) The motive behind Weinstein's claim that theories express explanations that have wide or universal scientific acceptance is that he wants to counter the people who say, "Evolution is just a theory. No one's proved it." He is contending against the religious fundamentalists who think Creationism should be taught alongside Darwinian Evolution in schools as a viable alternative. In his view, a theory begins as a notion, develops into a testable hypothesis, and then becomes a theory when it wins the support of a preponderance of experts in the particular field the initial notion fits into. A theory is something generally accepted as true. This puts Weinstein into a difficult position with respect to 'conspiracy theories' such as the theory that the moon-landing in 1969 was a hoax. In Bret Weinstein's view, this should be described as a 'conspiracy hypothesis' or perhaps only a 'conspiracy notion' rather than a 'conspiracy theory'. The only things that can be described as conspiracy theories are beliefs about conspiracies that are generally accepted to be true. Thus, although we can't talk about an Area 51 conspiracy theory, we can talk about the Watergate conspiracy theory.

I try to use language precisely and clearly. As a result, I find myself in disagreement with Bret Weinstein – I feel he is trying to redefine words to push his own agenda. In another episode, for instance, he tries to convince the audience that seals are actually bears, a counterintuitive claim that seems plausible because it is so surprising. But we should try to use language in the way it has been given to us, either by other people or by lexicographers. My dictionary defines 'theory' principally as 'a supposition or a system of ideas intended to explain something, especially one based on general principles independent of the thing to be explained". There is nothing in this definition that suggests a theory must have popular support; I might have a theory that no one else in the world shares but it could still, by this definition, be a theory. Likewise, Creationism is a theory – it just so happens that it is not a theory endorsed by very many people within the biology community. Rather than say that the Theory of Darwinian Evolution is true by definition, I think that Weinstein should take the position that some theories are better, more likely to be true, than others. I actually think biology teachers at high schools should teach the controversy or at least make a nod towards it. They should say, "The theory I am going to teach you, the Darwinian Theory of Evolution, is the theory accepted by most biologists and, because this is a biology class, this is the theory I am going to teach you. Some people believe the theory that the world was created in 4004BC by God and that the Bible is literally true. There are lots of others who believe the Upanishads are literally true. But because this is a biology class, I am going to teach you biology. You can read up about the Upanishads in your own time."

In tonight's post, I am going to present a theory, an evolutionary explanation for homosexuality. I know this seems inconsistent with earlier posts – I have criticised Darwinism in the past and probably will do so again in the future. But just because I do not believe in the Darwinian evolutionary mechanism, Survival of the Fittest, does not mean I don't believe in evolution. The theory I wish to present is speculative, a notion that may not even rise to the status of hypothesis, although it does make testable predictions, as I shall describe later. I want to present it almost as a kind of thought experiment – how could homosexuality have evolved? In earlier posts, most clearly in the post "Shoplifters of the World, Unite and Take Over", I have given an alternative explanation for homosexuality but in this post I wish to explain it on another level. Some people say, "The cause of crime is poverty" and this is true, even though a particular crime, such as a robbery or mugging, has a myriad of causes, not least the free decision of the criminal. What I wish to theorise about in this post is why homosexuality is possible – I wish to account for the potentiality of homosexuality among humans. The ideas I wish to present may not be original with me. A book was published a couple of years ago that may have explored similar ideas: I haven't read it and have forgotten its name but I mentioned it in an earlier post. Bret Weinstein has also threatened to unleash a hypothesis on the world concerning homosexuality but, as far as I know, hasn't done so yet.

It is reasonable to suppose that fifteen thousand years ago, and perhaps for hundreds of thousands of years before then, humans and the ancestors of humans lived in groups, troops, of perhaps fifty individuals. The size of a typical troop is a pure guess on my part. A troop would compete against other troops for resources and there would be a strong incentive for significant cohesion within a particular troop. Children would be born to a troop and raised collectively by a troop. I would like to suggest that in this prehistoric milieux, the ancestors of modern humans were bisexual and promiscuous, like Bonobo monkeys. The exact social structure of a typical troop is difficult to determine today but anthropologists and sociobiologists could perhaps make some educated guesses about it. Between 11,500 years ago and 10,000 years ago, the agricultural revolution occurred – plants and animals were domesticated, a change that must have resulted in significant social alterations. For one thing, the number of individuals in a particular group would have massively increased, making it less rewarding for men to raise offspring who might not be their own. A mutation appeared and spread through human populations. Humans born with this mutation had an inclination towards heterosexual monogamy, a mutation that made it more likely that men were raising their own children and ensured that women were supported when raising their children in a culture that had become more atomised and less collective. The idea of romantic love had been born. This change in sexual behaviour and culture became the dominant mode, the new norm.

This tension between the older hunter-gatherer sexuality and the sexuality of more modern humans persists today. I shall call humans who exhibit the older behaviour 'dogs' and the humans who exhibit the more modern behaviour 'cats'. In using these tags, I am not saying anything about the sexual practice of actual dogs and cats – rather they are just useful labels. Readers of my blog may remember that when I experienced my first psychotic episode, in 2007, I formed the paranoid delusion that the world was ruled by a conspiracy of closet homosexuals and that there were more homosexuals than heterosexuals in the world. I believed that homosexuals were the ones having children and heterosexuals weren't, that heterosexuality was being systematically weeded out of the gene pool. In those days, I was obsessed by 'cats' and 'dogs' – I thought that I had to choose to identify as one or the other. I refused to choose because I didn't know what the terms meant. Having defined the terms in this post, I can now say that I am a 'cat', a believer in romantic heterosexual love.

In the culture we live in, we are accustomed to dividing the world into 'heterosexuals' and 'homosexuals', people who are exclusively heterosexual and people who are exclusively homosexual. This makes for a formidable problem for evolutionary biologists. How could a gene or set of genes that by definition disallows reproduction spread to an estimated 10% of the population? If we accept my theory, however, we shouldn't divide the world into heterosexuals and homosexuals. Rather we should divide the world into heterosexuals and bisexuals, cats and dogs. Men and women we are accustomed to think of as gay should be described as bisexual rather than homosexual. We don't have to look hard for evidence of this. Oscar Wilde, who was famously convicted of homosexuality, had two sons. Philip Schofield, who came out as gay at the age of 57, has two daughters. I have known men who identify as straight who have had homosexual experiences, and I have met men who identify as gay who sleep with women. If we suppose that the basic distinction is between heterosexuality and bisexuality, the problem evolutionary biologists face dissolves. Bisexuality could be hereditable and could propagate down generations. A second question arises however: if the natural distinction is between heterosexuality and bisexuality, rather than heterosexuality and homosexuality, why does our language fail to map this reality? Partly this is because heterosexuality is the norm. And partly I think this is because bisexuals are excluded from the community for reason of a lack of fitness.

The theory I have presented is similar to the kind of hypotheses advanced by evolutionary psychologists. However, it differs from regular evolutionary psychology in two key respects. First, the arguments advanced by evolutionary psychologists tend to hark back to a primordial scene in prehistory and say, "This is the origin of human nature!" I think instead that human nature changes over time. Secondly, I think that there are least two different kinds of human nature, the human nature of dogs and the human nature of cats, rather than a single, unified human nature. I would add that, although it is convenient to divide the world's human population into cats and dogs, the war between cats and dogs takes place in the heart of every human.

Having presented this theory, I shall discuss the ways it could be tested and its limitations. Hunter-gatherer groups still exist today and, if the theory is true, we would expect such hunter-gatherer societies to be very different in terms of cultural practices like marriage and child rearing. I imagine that there is an enormous amount of literature on this subject but, unfortunately, I haven't read any of it. A possible limitation is that I have described dogs as both bisexual and promiscuous and cats as both heterosexual and monogamous. Of course, there are men and women who are totally heterosexual and promiscuous, and it may be the case that there are gay men and lesbians who are totally monogamous. This is not a serious defect of the theory however. It is logical to suppose that the genes that control how attached one becomes to a sexual partner are different to the genes that code for sexual preference. Of course, as I've said in other posts, I am not a fan of evolutionary psychology because I do not see how a length of DNA can code for a behaviour. The theory I am proposing is, as I've said, an exercise in speculation.

In this post, I have presented a theory that may be false or may have a little something to it. If the reader takes anything away from it, it is the truth that bisexuality exists. I say this as a heterosexual  man who became seriously unwell a long time ago partly because I didn't believe in bisexuality. If we lived in a world in which bisexuality was recognised and bisexuals could come out, I don't believe I would have suffered in the way I have. Perhaps the lesson is simpler – perhaps the truth can be distilled to a single maxim. If in doubt, ask.