How can evolutionary psychologists talk about adaptations without talking about specific genes?
Although adaptations evolved to facilitate the reproduction of the genes that code for the adaptation, not the reproduction of the organism bearing those genes, this important distinction leads to no difference whatsoever in the analysis of large categories of adaptations. In most cases, the reproduction of the organism is required for genetic replication. This is why Darwin was able to propose adaptationist explanations that still stand. Darwin–and scientists to this day–can, for the most part, avoid the currently intractable problem of the precise relationship between genes and complex adaptations and instead focus on the eminently tractable problem of the reproductive functions of the body and brain. Scientists can confidently address the functions of hearts, lungs, blood, and uteruses using evidence of design without knowing anything about the genes that code for these organs. The question becomes, not “did these traits facilitate the reproduction of specific genes,” but rather,
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