The emperor’s new paradigm - Budapest University of
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Transcript The emperor’s new paradigm - Budapest University of
The emperor’s new
paradigm
The rise and fall and rise and fall
of evolutionary perspectives in
psychology
On evolution
A chicken is just an egg's way of
making more eggs.
Charles Darwin
Premise 1: Struggle for survival
Premise 2: Variability
Premise 3: Heritability
Premise 4: Fitness
CONCLUSION : NATURAL
SELECTION
•He observed breeders and different naturally evolving
species
•Charles Babbage: God = programmer of laws
Charles Darwin
Premise 1: Struggle for survival
Premise 2: Variability
Premise 3: Heritability
Premise 4: Fitness
CONCLUSION : NATURAL
SELECTION
(Artificial selection = eugenics – later!)
On the origin of species, 1859
Premise 1: Struggle for
survival
Species have great fertility.
They have more offspring than
ever grow to adulthood.
Populations remain roughly the
same size, with small changes.
(Food resources )
An implicit struggle for survival
ensues.
On the origin of species, 1859
Premise 2: Variability
In sexually reproducing species,
generally no two individuals are
identical.
Some of these variations directly
affect the ability of an individual to
survive in a given environment.
On the origin of species, 1859
Premise 3 Inheritability
Much of this variation is
inheritable.
Mind you: Mendel’s work –
though existant at the time
– was not known by Darwin
from the outset!
Inheritance mechanism
was imagined entirely
differently
On the origin of species, 1859
Premise 4
Fitness
Individuals less suited to
the environment are less
likely to survive and less
likely to reproduce,
while individuals more
suited to the environment
are more likely to survive
and more likely to
reproduce.
On the origin of species, 1859
CONCLUSION : NATURAL
SELECTION
The individuals that survive
are most likely to leave their
inheritable traits to future
generations.
A continuous natural
embetterment of the world?
Underlying assumptions
Premise 1: Struggle for survival
Malthusian idea – technological improvement
Premise 2: Variability
Much uniformity
Premise 3: Heritability
Debates even today – syphilis, doctoritis running
in families
Premise 4: Fitness – well-adapted to the
environment
Not at all a clear concept
Sickle cell anaemia
what it means for a non-natural selection
philosophy
The puzzling survivor
The Naked Ape – homo sapiens
No claws
No sharp teeth
Not too fast – slower than most predators at
any rate
Why is this parody of evolutionary
perfection still around and moreover
everywhere?
Solution by Evolutionary
Psychology
The adapted mind
The complexity seen in nature by Darwin
is compared to the complexity in human
behaviour and it is explained as such
Evolutionary psychology as an approach
Evolutionary psychology
The Human Animal (Sociobiology)
Adaptationism
Originally applied to biological organs – the most wellknown is the eye
Extensions: the brain is a biological organ
Supposition: the brain produces behaviour and
consciousness
Therefore: behaviour and consciousness is formed by
evolution just as the biological body is
Eye’s complexity – in the centre of debates
Richard Dawkins
An ardent proponent of adaptations
- earning him the title of Darwin’s
Rottweiler (and equally ardent
opponent to creationism )
The Blind Watchmaker – focuses
on how evolution could create
marvellous structures – like the eye
William Paley – a watch presupposes
intelligent design because of its
complexity
The Weasel problem
Shakespeare’s Hamlet
Hamlet: Do you see yonder cloud that's almost
in shape of a camel?
Polonius: By the mass, and 'tis like a camel,
indeed.
Hamlet: Methinks it is like a weasel.
Based on the infinite monkey theorem
A monkey bashing away at random on a
typewriter – given enough time he would
type the entire works of Shakespeare
how long would it take him to produce the
sentence ‘Methinks it is like a weasel.’?
The Weasel problem
Methinks it is like a weasel
This is 28 characters
Using 26 letters – only capitals and a
space bar
Probability?
2728 = 1040 = infinity, or at least much
longer than milliseconds from the
existence of the universe (13,73 billion =
13,73 * 109 years = 7,22 * 1018
milliseconds)
Sir Frederick Hoyle
„approximately the same order of
magnitude as the probability that a
hurricane could sweep through a
junkyard and randomly assemble a
Boeing 747.”
solar system full of blind men solving
Rubik's Cube simultaneously.
The simplest bacterium needs 1040,000
permutations, while the number of the
atoms in the universe is „only” 1080,
the chance is the same as throwing
50000 sixes in a row with a die
Sir Frederick Hoyle
Astronomer and sci-fi writer
He opposed the Big Bang theory –
because it needs a cause Steady
State theory
He also opposed natural
abiogenesis!
Intelligent design - Evolution from
Space
Hoyle’s fallacy
You don’t need 28 letters. You start with say 3.
They calculate the probability of the formation of a "modern"
protein, or even a complete bacterium with all "modern"
proteins, by random events.
This is not the abiogenesis theory at all – it starts with VERY
SIMPLE organisms
They assume that there is a fixed number of proteins, with fixed
sequences for each protein, that are required for life.
They calculate the probability of sequential trials, rather
than simultaneous trials.
Changing one at a time – mutations are rare but do not exclude
each other
They seriously underestimate the number of functional
enzymes/ribozymes present in a group of random
sequences – only one good solution fallacy
The Weasel problem
Cumulative selections instead of a single step
selection
Two differences in his model:
Copying mechanism – it retains previous states
There is an inherent goal – any change that occurs
towards methinks it is a weasel is kept, others are
discarded
Generation 1: WDLMNLT DTJBKWIRZREZLMQCO P
Generation 2: WDLTMNLT DTJBSWIRZREZLMQCO P
Generation 10: MDLDMNLS ITJISWHRZREZ MECS P
Generation 20: MELDINLS IT ISWPRKE Z WECSEL
Generation 30: METHINGS IT ISWLIKE B WECSEL
Generation 40: METHINKS IT IS LIKE I WEASEL
Generation 43: METHINKS IT IS LIKE A WEASEL
Adaptive landscapes
Fitness or adaptive
landscapes – genetic
variation is pushed to the
direction of the arrows
Waddington – epigenetic
landscape – curiously posits a
rolling, not a climbing ball
Saddle points in
mathematics as nonoptimal solutions
Cosmides & Tooby
Flexibility – a basis never questioned
Instinct vs reason distinction
Please make a mental note as this is to be relevant to the
discussion on implicit/explicit!
What is instinct blindness according to Williams
James?
Make the „natural seem strange” program
„’of course’ is no longer a good answer” – does evolutionary
psychology manage to get round the problem?
„cognitive psychologists spend more time studying
how we solve problems we are bad at” – the concept
of „difficult” is being redefined
The Blank Slate
The Standard Social Science Model (SSSM)
learning
Induction
Intelligence
Imitation
Rationality
the capacity for culture
Culture
A proposed problem with domain generality: if
there is no inborn mechanism at all (only
perception), what learns how to learn?
SSSM
What is this „roughly” supposed to mean
exactly?
Hypotheses and problems:
The problem of innateness – is it
Babies are
born
with the same capacities
presence at birth?
(roughly) all
over the world
YET they come to be very different adults finally, with
Are domain-general
learning
different customs
and habits
mechanisms good enough to deal with
The differencethe
must
therefore
information
load? lie in their experience
of the world+Consider the visual system
This experience is mediated through generalpurpose-learning Are
mechanisms
cultures all that different?
Culture must
How much universality lies under the
be
thediffereces
explanation
– it has
cultural
of human societies?
overarching and all-pervasive effect
an
Arguments against
Many things are not present at birth that are
rarely doubted to be innate
Do we learn to grow beards and menstruate?
The nature/nurture dichotomy is not only
arbitrary – it is false
again connected to innateness
In some cases domain-general learning
mechanisms are just not enough
Most prominent example is language – poverty of
stimulus argument
Moreover: striking differences - species-specific
learning mechanisms (also consider phobias)
Asking the wrong questions
genes vs environment
~ engine or gasoline?
~ the ingredients of bread
Presence at birth is not required – points
at the problematics of „innate”
Innateness
What do we mean by innate? Cognitive science
Non-acquisition
UG – vacuous, as in a sense everything is acquired at some
point – a blastula has no UG
Presence at birth – inborn
Neither necessary (pubic hair), nor sufficient (prenatal
learning is possible)
Internally caused as opposed to environmentally
induced
Jeffrey Ellman: rethinking Innateness „the product of
interactions internal to the organism…”
Impossible: without maternal blood, no organ could possibly
develop at all
Triggering is often evoked – yet unsure in meaning
Innateness
What do we mean by innate? Biology
Genetically determined?
Genetically caused
Genetically represented – mapped in DNA
Both accounts fail because of
interactionist explanations
difficulty of observation
Invariance accounts – stable across „normal”
environments
Attractive as it explains stability and universality in
a species
YET: the concept that water is wet would be innate
Innateness
What do we mean by innate?
Innateness as high heritability
Heritability=overall phenotypic variation that is due to genetic
variation (Vg/Vp)
However: only works if there is phenotypic variation – if there
is none, it is useless
Opposable thumb in humans – drug taaken by mother
disrupting its development -> low heritability
Not learned
Learning is nearly as slippery as innateness is…Yet..
Psychologically primitive
Can not be explained by general psychological mechanisms
– have to retreat to biological explanations
Bootstrapping-type learning – learning that is faster that would
be expected based on a domain-general view
Adaptive minds
Problem-specificity:
The brain is a naturally constructed computational system whose
function is to solve adaptive information-processing problems
Modularity of mind – the Swiss army knife model
face recognition, threat interpretation, language acquisition, or
navigation
Domain specificity (environment specifity) – domain generality
(modus ponens works in all environmental conditions)
adaptive problems
Permanent to be solved in the life of a species
Enhance reproductive success
What about survival?
The side-effect trick (exaptation)
Walking and skateboarding
MMA hypothesis
Massive modularity
Modern-day
phrenology?
Jerry Fodor: Modularity
Differentiation of modules and central processing
systems
Modules are:
Domain-specific
Rapid
Informationally encapsulated
Automatic – obligatory firing
Shallow output
Inaccessible to consciousness
Characteristic pattern of breakdown - lesions
„The moon looks bigger when it’s on the horizon; but I know
perfectly well it’s not. My visual perception module gets fooled,
but I don’t. The question is: who is this I?[…] If, in short, there is
a community of computers living in my head, there had also
better be somebody who is in charge; and, by God, it had better
be me. ” Jerry Fodor on Pinker and Plotkin
Jerry Fodor: The trouble with psychologicalDarwinism. London
Review of Books
Reasoning circuits – rational
instincts
1. Structured around an adaptive problem
2. Universally present in homo sapiens
3. Develop without conscious effort (speech
vs writing)
4. Applied without conscious effort
5. Distinct from more general abilities
Stone age minds
EEA - environment of evolutionary adaptedness
„For this reason, evolutionary psychology is relentlessly pastoriented…”
What is problematic about this argument?
Proximal and distal explanations in psychology
Universalism
the universal, species-typical architecture
reliably develops across the (ancestrally) normal range
psychic unity of humankind – as opposed to marvellous
cultural diversity
(Donald Brown – the universal human)
Margaret Mead – coming of age in the Samoa – Derek Freeman
Donald Brown
The Universal People
The total list comprises about 150 items
Abstraction (in speech and in
thought)
Language!
baby talk
Antonyms
Nouns
numerals
Belief in supernatural/religion –
magic (wicca)
Beliefs about death, disease,
fortune & misfortune
Binary cognitive distinctions –
antonyms
Childhood fear of strangers/loud
noises
Coalitions
Collective identities
Cooperation & competition
Morals
Murder prohibited
Rape prohibited
Myths & narratives
Meals & meal times
Marriage
Daily routines
Melody
Metaphors
Music
Repetition&variation
Dance
Crying (emotions?)
Personal names
Planning
Prode
Promise
Recognition of individuals by face
Rhythm
Rites of passage & rituals
Oedipus complex – defense
mechanisms
self-image
The importance of universalism
In theory, evolution could explain diversity
– supposing a varying environment would
entail varying organisms
Why is universalism so highly emphasized
then?
Sociobiology and social Darwinism
Edward O. Wilson
1971. Insect societies
1975: Sociobiology: The New Synthesis
1978: On human nature
In a Darwinian sense the organism does not live for
itself. Its primary function is not even to reproduce other
organisms; it reproduces genes, and it serves as their
temporary carrier... Samuel Butler's famous aphorism,
that the chicken is only an egg's way of making another
egg, has been modernized: The organism is only DNA's
way of making more DNA
Edward O. Wilson
People are animals, their behavior has evolved
just like that of the animals, and our culture has
a biological component
altruism : self-destructive behavior performed
for the benefit of others – what other
explanation than culture?
Edward O. Wilson
Culture is the slave of biology – it can only
survive as long as it supports biological needs
Gathering of resources (territorial fights)
cooperation – helping relatives
Securing the continuity of the population
Resonates to Nazi „Sozialbiologie”, genetic
determinism, eugenics
Richard Lewontin
Not in Our Genes
Population geneticist – locus studies
The concept of niche and interaction – the environment
does not form passive creatures according to its own
accord
Deterministic perspective is false : biological creatures
are actively forming their environment
Sould it be different the homo sapiens would not be alive by
now
Legitimation and ideology – first God and now science is the
weapon – universities the factories that produce them
The danger in evolutionary belief
Sociobiology
The mere idea of struggle and survival is inherent in
nature and it is inevitable gives moral justification
towards the „unfit”
Mary Midgley: Evolution as a Religion
„Facts will never appear to us as brute and
meaningless; they will always organize themselves
into some sort of story, some drama”
Buss: the moral/naturalistic fallacy (Dawkins
examines it as well)
Does studying heart attack cause heart attacks?
Eugenics
Eu – good, well (euphoria)
Genics – (genes) born
(genetics)
any human action whose
goal is to improve the
gene pool
Renaissance idea:
improvement of the world
through science: why not
better humankind?
Second International Eugenics
Conference, 1921
Popularity of eugenics
Originally a field of science!
1859
1900
1920
1940
1950
1992
Multifaceted Eugenics
Trait
Intelligence
Mental diseases
Detrimental mental
traits - criminality
Physical diseases
(tubercolosis)
Race
Means:
Dissemination of
information and free
choice
Vocational counselling
Genetic counselling
Marriage restriction
Segregation
Compulsory sterilization
Compulsory abortion
Forced pregnancy
Genocide
Sir Francis Galton (1822-1911)
Charles Darwin’s halfcousin
and a child prodigy
Statistician
Correlation
Medical studies
1960 – Oxford Evolution
Debate
Hereditary Genius
Count the number of the relatives of various degrees of
eminent men
Proposed:
adoption studies
trans-racial adoption studies
Twin studies
adopted and non-adopted
Later: dyzigotic and monozygotic
Aware of the nature-nurture debate
1883: invented the word eugenics (Inquiries into human
faculty and its development)
Dysgenic behaviour of eminent people
Introducing monetary incentives
The Galton Institute (Former Eugenics
Society)
The Bell Curve, 1994
Intelligence predicts:
Financial income
Job performance
Crime
Intelligence is
inherited 40-80%
Perils of a custodial
State
The Bell Curve, 1994
Intelligence is normally
distributed - g
sum of many small random
variations in genetic and
environmental factors
Racial claims –
differences between
blacks and whites
Controversial – APA
Intelligence: Knowns
and Unknowns
At present, no one
knows what causes
this differential.
Validity problem
National Longitudinal Survey of Labor Market Experience of Youth
California, 1900-1940s
Eugenics flourishing
Influential group of intellects endorsed and
financed eugenic projects
Haynes – physician in Los Angeles (bronchitis!)
Goethe – businessmen of Sacramento
Cold Spring Harbor Station – research facility
Aggravated by the Great Depression
„act of civilizing” & Manifest Destiny
Sinophobia and discrimination, scientific racism
California, 1900-1940s
Eugenics flourishing
Active involvement of governmental
organizations
Large-scale administration of IQ tests
Authorization of scientific research and sterilization
Expulsion of foreigners and undesirables en
masse
Fomented racial segregation
IQ testing – two-tracked school system
California, 1900-1940s Eugenics
Victims:
Racial groups
Immigrants
Mexicans
Asian Americans
African Americans
Young girls classified as
Immoral
Delinquent
3 stages : liberal – state – liberal
Liberal starting point
1910 Terman’s Binet-Simon test
Whites
Mexicans
Negroes
Intelligence tied to Nordic blood…
Segregation
Vocational counselling
Sterilizations per annum 1909-1936
Haynes in Los Angeles
sterilizations per annum
900
Society organized for wellbeing
Regulate and streaamline
800
700
600
500
Gosney and Popenoe
400
300
Sterilization for Human
Betterment
200
100
0
1909
1920
1929
1936
1942
1952
Major themes:
Delinquency
Mental retardedness
1935 HOGUE’s bill – to
extend sterilization did not
pass
Competent decision
boards:
Directors, wardens and
superintendents
Drop in 1952
Administrative measures
PROTECTION - NOT PENALTY
emphasis shifts from heredity to capacity
and responsability of parenthood and
social skills
Change in methods towards liberal measures
in 1940
Popenoe
Counselling – career planning, marriage, family planning
Information dissemination on eugenical measures
Holmes (1920) monetary incentives
The motives shifted
Early years – genes deflate the germ plasm
(1880)
Initially against: criminality, imbecility, poverty…
White supremacy, racial segregation, stereotypes
Mexican boys – mentally incompetent – forced manual
workers
Mexican women – hyperbreeders dependent on
welfare
Defectives depleting resources – fiscal
justifications
Herbert Spencer
Social darwinism
Taking „survival of the fittest” a step too far
Darwin himself thought it impractical – he would
rather have spread the knowledge and let people
decide for themselves
2 basic mistakes
Naturalistic fallacy
He conflates development with change
Probably a side effect of the ancient idea of the scala naturae
Internal struggles
Evolution by selection is the only known causal process
capable of creating such complex organic mechanisms.
(David Buss)
Jerry Fodor
The motiv is inaccessible even to the agent
A way of restoring our innocence
Psychological Darwinism is a kind of conspiracy
theory; that is, it explains behaviour by imputing an
interest (viz in the proliferation of the genome) that
the agent of the behaviour does not acknowledge.
Popular for the same reason Freud was popular: a
slip of tongue is just a libidinous impulse
Objections : Jerry Fodor
Is it ONLY adaptationism that is able to explain such
complexity?
The complexity of behaviour itself is irrelevant
evolution does not and can not act on it
only on brains
What matters is how much you would have to change an ape’s
brain in order to produce that much complexity in behaviour
„ And about this, exactly nothing is known. ”
It is not like the giraffe’s neck – longer is evident
In fact the difference between brains is not that big (J.F.)
in terms of genes it is even smaller
„what matters with regard to the question whether the mind is an adaptation is not
how complex our behaviour is, but how much change you would have to make in an
ape’s brain to produce the cognitive structure of a human mind. And about this,
exactly nothing is known. That’s because nothing is known about how the structure of
our minds depends on the structure of our brains.”
Objections : Jerry Fodor
Methodological flaw: „reverse engineering”
inferring how a device must work from a prior
appreciation of its function
Ever tried using telnet?
you don’t have to know how hands (or hearts, or eyes, or livers)
evolved to make a pretty shrewd guess about what they are for.
Maybe you also don’t have to know how the mind evolved to
make a pretty shrewd guess at what it’s for; for example, that it’s
to think with. (Fodor, J.)
Concerns with evolutionary
psychology
Level of selection
Individual
Gene
Group
Question of fitness & adaptation
Small designs that lead to a higher reproduction of a trait
CIRCULARITY
Fitness (reasoning circuits) has a definition
Yet how do you recognize it in retrospect?
Which one is the result of an adaptation?
Xenophobia
colour of bones
form of earlobes
The circular argumentation
problem
Inherent goal – often evokes attacks of circular
argumentation – the reverse engineering
problem
The effects strive towards the goal
The goal preexists (who invented the goal?)
Answer – evolutionary forces
How do you know this was the goal?
Because it is reached!
Just-so stories (Rudyard Kipling)
Problems with blind adaptationism
1. The Panglossian Paradox
2. Graduality does not always work – saltational
models (one day you wake up speaking a
language?)
George Jackson Mivart - what do you do with 5% of
a wing?
Gould: exaptations
3. Physical constraints – Gould: spandrels
in the cathedral
The Panglossian Paradox
Candide, ou l'Optimisme by Voltaire
Critique of the Leibnizian mantra of Pangloss, "all is
for the best in the best of all possible worlds"
"Tout est pour le mieux dans le meilleur des
mondes"
theodicy of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
God is a benevolent deity –> the world is perfect
Dr. Pangloss, professor of "métaphysico-théologocosmolonigologie" and self-proclaimed optimist
The Panglossian Paradox
Lisbon's harbor episode, where honest James dies
Candide, who beheld all that passed and saw his benefactor one
moment rising above water, and the next swallowed up by the
merciless waves, was preparing to jump after him, but was
prevented by the philosopher Pangloss, who demonstrated to
him that the roadstead of Lisbon had been made on purpose for
the Anabaptist to be drowned there.
Pangloss on his own syphilis
it was a thing unavoidable, a necessary ingredient in the best of
worlds; for if Columbus had not caught in an island in America
this disease, which contaminates the source of generation, and
frequently impedes propagation itself, and is evidently opposed
to the great end of nature, we should have had neither chocolate
nor cochineal.
The best of all possible worlds
It is demonstrable that things cannot be otherwise
than as they are; for as all things have been created
for some end, they must necessarily be created for
the best end. Observe, for instance, the nose is
formed for spectacles, therefore we wear spectacles.
Have we replaced God by evolution? - Is the
world the best of all possible worlds?
On the function of our noses:
Is its inherent purpose
to hold spectacles?
to warm and moisturize air?
How are you to tell in retrospect?
Exaptation, cooption, preadaptation
NOT everything is an adaptation
Human vestigiality has long been observed
Tailbone
Vermiform appendix
Muscles in the ear
Shifts in the function of a trait during evolution
Cooption had a slight confusion with non-adaptive traits less used
Darwin already outlined the basis in the „Origin of Species”
bird feathers – originally thermo-regulatory function – adapted to flight
Mivart: the paradox of 5% of a wing!
Jury-rigged design – apparent non-functional traits might be telling
about the original function
Exaptation, cooption, preadaptation
Recently – Stephen J. Gould: The thumb of the
Panda
(uses the word exaptation)
The tinkertoy approach
Odd arrangements and funny solutions are the proof
of evolution--paths that a sensible God would never
tread but that a natural process, constrained by
history, follows perforce.
Other examples:
Mammals – lactatory glands
Flat feet – squat eating – bipedalism
Bones – calcium deposits primarily
Physical constraints
Venice: St Mark’s Cathedral
Stephen J. Gould and
Richard Lewontin
"The Spandrels of
San Marco and
the Panglossian Para
digm: A Critique of the
Adaptationist
Programme" (1979)
Are the spandrels there, so that nice paintings could be
painted on them, specially designed for that purpose?
More likely to be inherent in the Bauplan –
constraint on adaptive evolution
Causes of historical origin must always be separated from current
utilities; their conflation has seriously hampered the evolutionary
analysis of form in the history of life.
Physical constraints
Does the tyrannosaur’s
hands are especially
useful in titillating females
– is this a good
explanation for its
adaptive value?
Blind adaptationism does
not differentiate between
original function and
current potentialities
Just-so-stories
Physical constraints – like
spandrels – do not need
an evolutionary
explanation
In the age of Reason
What is the argument that Tooby and
Cosmides make about reasoning?
Think of the WASON task!
General problem solving
Specialized problem-solving modules
Mathematics – a basic concept or a high
art?
An argument can be made for both
How to make life difficult
Deduction and Induction
If it rains I’ll take an umbrella with me
It is raining.
I take an umbrella with me.
I take an umbrella with me
It is either raining or not
It is not raining
I either take an umbrella with me or not
I do not take an umbrella with me
It is not raining
John studied accountancy at university.
John works at an accountant’s office.
Therefore John is an accountant.
Modus ponens
Modus tollens
The Wason task – deduction task
There are 4 cards on the table
E
K
2
7
Each card has a letter on one side and a number on the
other
RULE: If the card has a wovel on it, the other side
must have an even number on it
Which one(s) do you have to turn to know if they
conform to the rule or not?
The
Wason
task
There are 4 cards on the table
beer
Coke
22
17
All cards have a drink on one side and the age
on the other
RULE: If one drinks alcohol, they need to be
over age
Which one(s) do you have to turn to know if they
conform to the rule or not?
Why the difference?
Social rules
Evolutionary psychology – cheater detectors?
What is the counter-argument to that?
Some provocative questions
Does natural selection still work in our
highly artificial society?
What will the homo sapiens be like in
another 200.000 years?
Why are there mental illnesses, if
adaptationism is so powerful in
evolutionary psychology?