1262 THE STRUCTURE OF EVOLUTIONARY THEORY
be confident that no future researcher of such high status and such empirical expertise
will again commit the bald version of the Nietzschian fallacy of confusing current
utility with historical origin—as did Kruuk (1972), the most eminent student of
spotted hyenas, when he argued that he had resolved the adaptive origin of
"malemimicking" genitalia by documenting the undoubted utility of these features in
facilitating recognition of previously solitary clan members in the "meeting
ceremony."
I wanted to call my popular article (Gould, 1987a) on my favorite human
example "tits and clits," but desisted because readers would have assumed a sexist
bias when I really meant to designate male tits, not to denigrate women. (I eventually
settled upon the rhythmically catchy, but not quite so pithy, "male nipples and clitoral
ripples.") The male question may be largely facetious, although the issue has evoked
substantial and explicit discussion ever since Buff on: why do men grow apparently
non-functional nipples? The puzzlement of so many people, including several
accomplished scientists, flowed from adaptationist biases that demanded an
explanation in utilitarian terms: perhaps males can suckle babies in certain
circumstances; or perhaps they once did, and male nipples persist as a vestige? But
the probable resolution, based on a quite different (albeit simple) perspective,
requires the codification of a concept of nonadaptive spandrels for recognition and
understanding: males probably grow nipples because females need them for an
evident purpose, and many aspects of development follow a single pathway. So
females grow nipples as adaptations for suckling, and males grow smaller and unused
nipples as a spandrel based upon the value of single developmental channels.
The female counterpart, however, has evoked much argument, and imposed
substantial grief upon millions of women during the 20th century: why do most
female orgasms emanate from a clitoral, rather than a vaginal (or some other), site?
The male biologists who fretted over this question simply assumed that a deeply
vaginal site, nearer the region of fertilization, would offer greater selective benefit to
the Darwinian summum bonum of enhanced reproductive success—hence the
supposed puzzle. In the tragedy heaped upon this error, Sigmund Freud defined the
almost anatomically impossible transition from clitoral to vaginal orgasm as the
defining criterion of sexual maturity in women. He even regarded, and so labelled,
the persistence of perfectly satisfactory and exciting clitoral orgasm as a form of
frigidity. Under his influence, millions of women with normal sexual responses
struggled to meet this impossible criterion of "true" realization—with consequences
ranging from the sad to the tragic.
But a more probable resolution—if any mystery remains once we shed our
adaptationist biases—might identify the clitoral site as a spandrel by the same
argument applied to male nipples. The female clitoris is the developmental homolog
of the male penis, and the adaptive value of male orgasm seems no more
problematical than the biological function of the female breast. The clitoral site of
female orgasm need not hold any special adaptive value per se, but may arise as a
developmental consequence of selection upon the same organ in males.