In 1991 the cultural anthropologist Don Brown bucked anthropology’s tabula rasa tradition by identifying over 300 “human universals”—individual and sociocultural traits that are found in every known human society (Brown 1991; universals enumerated in Pinker 2003). The items he identified include both psychological traits (e.g., wariness around snakes, sweets preferred, sexual jealousy) and soci...

Arguments between adherents of different therapeutic models are often based on the assumption that empirical evidence is ultimately the judge of the merits of the respective approaches. The gathering of empirical evidence, however, is programmed by epistemological premises that in turn are not tested by "objective" demonstration but rather by their congruence with prevailing sociocultural value...