Evolutionary Causation in Biological Anthropology: Study of Monogamy, Eduardo Fernandez-Duque
Opening remarks by Tamar Gendler.
“Evolutionary Causation in Biological Anthropology: Lessons from the Study of Monogamy and Fatherhood in Non-human Primates.”
Biological anthropologists seek to understand the evolutionary biology of humans. They do so studying past and current human populations, as well as populations of our non-human primate relatives. In the first part of his presentation, Dr. Fernandez-Duque briefly describes the subdisciplines of paleoanthropology, human biology, and primatology to illustrate the temporal and space scales over which causal inquiries are formulated in biological anthropology. He then summarizes observational and semi-experimental studies of non-human primates conducted by his group and collaborators in the forests of Ecuador, Perú, and Argentina and Primate Centers in the United States to understand the evolutionary causes and correlates of monogamy, pair-bonding, and parental care.
This in-person workshop was the culmination of our on-going multidisciplinary exploration project Understanding the Nature of Inference: Correlation and Causation. During the course of our colloquium series, generously funded by the John Templeton Foundation, we explored how inference models operate across disciplines by learning from each other. To this end, we endeavored to go beyond our respective vantage points, across fields and into a new epistemic framework to define causal relationships and how they function. In particular, we discussed the various kinds of methodological schemas, their merits and limits and potential for refinement and re-definition to ferret out causal connections.
During our December 2023 Workshop, experts from varied disciplines presented how they set up problem solving given the complexity of systems that they model; the philosophers assembled examined the nature of laws. A key question they were asked to address in addition to explaining the current landscape of modeling methodologies was how a near-future data deluge is likely to impact their modeling methodologies. Most fields stand to transform dramatically with the influx of vast amounts of new data expected within the next 2 – 5 years. How current conceptual models will need to be refined and altered in this scenario were discussed within the talks and amongst our numerous participants.
We are indebted to The Edward J. and Dorothy Clarke Kempf Memorial Fund and The Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale, as well as to the John Templeton Foundation, for the generous funding we received to bring this Workshop to fruition.