Elisabeth Lloyd

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Elisabeth Anne Lloyd (born September 3, 1956 in Morristown (New Jersey) ) is an American biophilosophist . She is Professor of the History of Science and Philosophy of Science at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana .

Life

Lloyd graduated in 1980 with a BA in science and political theory at the University of Colorado at Boulder with summa cum laude from. In 1984 she received her Ph.D. in philosophy from Princeton University after studying genetics at Harvard University with Stephen Jay Gould in 1983 . From 1990 to 1999, Lloyd was Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley . She has been Professor of Biology and Philosophy at Indiana University since 1998.

job

Lloyd works primarily in the fields of bio and science philosophy and is concerned with the role of models and gender issues in science.

The Case Of The Female Orgasm

In 2005 Lloyd published The Case of the Female Orgasm: Bias in the Science of Evolution , in which she examines 21 different theories on the evolution of the female orgasm and uses this analysis to identify systematic biases in modern evolutionary research.

According to Lloyd, only Donald Symons' theory from 1979 is tenable. Symons took the view that the female orgasm, unlike the male, was not an evolutionary adaptation , but an evolutionary by-product, similar to the male nipple . This is supported by the fact that there is no correlation between female orgasms and fertility or frequency of sexual intercourse. The popular "upsuck hypothesis", which ascribes a fertility-increasing effect to the contractions of the female orgasm, is by no means empirically confirmed. The maintenance of other theories is also not justified by empirical knowledge. Surveys show that only 25% of women normally orgasm during intercourse, and that these women often need clitoral stimulation for this too . In addition, around a third of women rarely or never have an orgasm. These facts cast serious doubts on adaptive theories.

Lloyd then discusses possible reasons for the widespread use of adaptive theories. Similar to her previous mentor Stephen Jay Gould , she notes a popular tendency to prefer adaptive to non- adaptive explanations. Second, male-dominated sexology tends to mistakenly attribute a male response to sex to women .

The book met with strong media coverage.

Books

  • The Structure and Confirmation of Evolutionary Theory , Greenwood Press, 1988 ( ISBN 0691000468 ).
  • The Case of the Female Orgasm: Bias in the Science of Evolution , Harvard University Press, 2005 ( ISBN 0674022467 ).
  • Science, Politics and Evolution , Cambridge University Press, 2008 ( ISBN 9780521865708 ).

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