Adaptationism, also known as functionalism, is the Darwinian view that many physical and psychological traits of organisms are evolved adaptations. Pan-adaptationism is the strong form of this, deriving from the early 20th century modern synthesis, that all traits are adaptations, a view now shared by few biologists.
Adaptationists perform research to try to distinguish adaptations
(e.g., the umbilical cord) from byproducts (e.g., the belly button) or
random variation (e.g., convex or concave shape of the belly button). George Williams' Adaptation and Natural Selection (1966) was highly influential in its development, defining some of the heuristics used to identify adaptations.
Criteria to identify a trait as an adaptation
Adaptationism
is an approach to studying the evolution of form and function. It
attempts to frame the existence and persistence of traits, assuming that
each of them arose independently and improved the reproductive success
of the organism's ancestors.
A trait is an adaptation if it fulfils the following criteria:
The trait is a variation of an earlier form.
The trait is heritable through the transmission of genes.
The trait enhances reproductive success.
Constraints on the power of evolution
Genetic constraints
Genetic reality provides constraints on the power of random mutation followed by natural selection.
With pleiotropy,
some genes control multiple traits, so that adaptation of one trait is
impeded by effects on other traits that are not necessarily adaptive.
Selection that influences epistasis
is a case where the regulation or expression of one gene, depends on
one or several others. This is true for a good number of genes though to
differing extents. The reason why this leads to muddied responses is
that selection for a trait that is epistatically based can mean that an allele
for a gene that is epistatic when selected would happen to affect
others. This leads to the coregulation of others for a reason other than
there is an adaptive quality to each of those traits. Like with
pleiotropy, traits could reach fixation in a population as a by-product
of selection for another.
In the context of development the difference between pleiotropy
and epistasis is not so clear but at the genetic level the distinction
is more clear. With these traits as being by-products of others it can
ultimately be said that these traits evolved but not that they
necessarily represent adaptations.
Polygenic
traits are controlled by a number of separate genes. Many traits are
polygenic, for example human height. To drastically change a polygenic
trait is likely to require multiple changes.
Anatomical constraints
Anatomical constraints are features of organism's anatomy
that are prevented from change by being constrained in some way. When
organisms diverge from a common ancestor and inherit certain
characteristics which become modified by natural selection of mutant
phenotypes, it is as if some traits are locked in place and are unable
to change in certain ways. Some textbook anatomical constraints often include examples of structures that connect parts of the body together though a physical link.
These links are hard if not impossible to break because evolution
usually requires that anatomy be formed by small consecutive
modifications in populations through generations. In his book, Why We Get Sick, Randolph Nesse uses the "blind spot" in the vertebrate eye (caused by the nerve fibers running through the retina) as an example of this. He argues that natural selection
has come up with an elaborate work-around of the eyes wobbling
back-and-forth to correct for this, but vertebrates have not found the
solution embodied in cephalopod eyes, where the optic nerve does not interrupt the view. See also: Evolution of the eye.
Another example is the cranial nerves in tetrapods. In early vertebrate evolution, sharks, skates, and rays (collectively Chondrichthyes),
the cranial nerves run from the part of the brain that interprets
sensory information, and radiate out towards the organs that produce
those sensations. In tetrapods, however, and mammals in particular, the nerves take an elaborate winding path through the cranium around structures that evolved after the common ancestor with sharks.
Adaptationism is sometimes characterized by critics as an unsubstantiated assumption that all or most traits are optimal adaptations. Structuralist critics (most notably Richard Lewontin and Stephen Jay Gould in their "spandrel" paper) contend that the adaptationists have over-emphasized the power of natural selection to shape individual traits to an evolutionary optimum. Adaptationists are sometimes accused by their critics of using ad hoc"just-so stories". The critics, in turn, have been accused of misrepresentation (Straw man argumentation), rather than attacking the actual statements of supposed adaptationists.
Adaptationist researchers respond by asserting that they, too, follow George Williams'
depiction of adaptation as an "onerous concept" that should only be
applied in light of strong evidence. This evidence can be generally
characterized as the successful prediction of novel phenomena based on
the hypothesis that design details of adaptations should fit a complex
evolved design to respond to a specific set of selection pressures. In
evolutionary psychology, researchers such as Leda Cosmides, John Tooby, and David Buss
contend that the bulk of research findings that were uniquely predicted
through adaptationist hypothesizing comprise evidence of the methods'
validity.
Purpose and function
There
are philosophical issues with the way biologists speak of function,
effectively invoking teleology, the purpose of an adaptation.
To say something has a function is to say something about what it
does for the organism. It also says something about its history: how it
has come about. A heart
pumps blood: that is its function. It also emits sound, which is
considered to be an ancillary side-effect, not its function. The heart
has a history (which may be well or poorly understood), and that history
is about how natural selection formed and maintained the heart as a
pump. Every aspect of an organism that has a function has a history.
Now, an adaptation must have a functional history: therefore we expect
it must have undergone selection caused by relative survival in its
habitat. It would be quite wrong to use the word adaptation about a
trait which arose as a by-product.
It is widely regarded as unprofessional for a biologist to say
something like "A wing is for flying," although that is their normal
function. A biologist would be conscious that sometime in the remote
past feathers on a small dinosaur had the function of retaining heat,
and that later many wings were not used for flying (e.g. penguins, ostriches).
So, the biologist would rather say that the wings on a bird or an
insect usually had the function of aiding flight. That would carry the
connotation of being an adaptation with a history of evolution by
natural selection.
Teleology
was introduced into biology by Aristotle to describe the adaptedness of
organisms. Biologists have found the implications of purposefulness
awkward as they suggest supernatural intention, an aspect of Plato's thinking which Aristotle rejected. A similar term, teleonomy, was suggested by Colin Pittendrigh in 1958; it grew out of cybernetics and self-organising systems. Biologists of the 1960s such as Ernst Mayr, George C. Williams and Jacques Monod used it as a less loaded alternative. However, the discomfort remains. On the one hand, adaptation is
obviously purposeful: natural selection chooses what works and
eliminates what does not. On the other hand, biologists want to deny
conscious purpose in evolution. The dilemma gave rise to a famous joke
by the evolutionary biologist Haldane: "Teleology is like a mistress to a biologist: he cannot live without her but he's unwilling to be seen with her in public.'" David Hull
commented that Haldane's mistress "has become a lawfully wedded wife.
Biologists no longer feel obligated to apologize for their use of
teleological language; they flaunt it. The only concession which they
make to its disreputable past is to rename it 'teleonomy'."
Pinker is the Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, and his academic specializations are visual cognition and developmental linguistics.
His experimental subjects include mental imagery, shape recognition,
visual attention, children's language development, regular and irregular
phenomena in language, the neural bases of words and grammar, as well as the psychology of cooperation and communication, including euphemism, innuendo, emotional expression, and common knowledge. He has written two technical books that proposed a general theory of language acquisition and applied it to children's learning of verbs. In particular, his work with Alan Prince published in 1989 critiqued the connectionist model of how children acquire the past tense of English verbs, positing that children use default rules, such as adding -ed to make regular forms, sometimes in error, but are obliged to learn irregular forms one by one.
Pinker is also the author of eight books for general audiences. The Language Instinct (1994), How the Mind Works (1997), Words and Rules (2000), The Blank Slate (2002), and The Stuff of Thought
(2007) describe aspects of psycholinguistics and cognitive science, and
include accounts of his own research, positing that language is an
innate behavior shaped by natural selection and adapted to our communication needs. Pinker's The Sense of Style (2014) is a general language-oriented style guide. Pinker's book The Better Angels of Our Nature
(2011) posits that violence in human societies has generally steadily
declined over time, and identifies six major trends and five historical
forces of this decline. Enlightenment Now (2018) uses social science data to show a general improvement of the human condition over recent history.
Pinker was born in Montreal, Quebec, in 1954, to a middle-class Jewish family. His grandparents emigrated to Canada from Poland and Romania in 1926, and owned a small necktie factory in Montreal. His father was a lawyer. His mother eventually became a high-school vice-principal. His brother is a policy analyst for the Canadian government, while his sister, Susan Pinker, is a psychologist and writer who authored The Sexual Paradox and The Village Effect.
Pinker married Nancy Etcoff in 1980 and they divorced in 1992; he married again in 1995 and again divorced. His third wife, whom he married in 2007, is the novelist and philosopher Rebecca Goldstein. He has two stepdaughters: the novelist Yael Goldstein Love and the poet Danielle Blau.
From 1982 until 2003, Pinker taught at the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT, was the co-director of the center for Cognitive science (1985–1994), and eventually became the director of the center for Cognitive neuroscience (1994–1999), taking a one-year sabbatical at the University of California, Santa Barbara,
in 1995–96. Since 2003, he has been serving as the Johnstone Family
Professor of Psychology at Harvard and between 2008 and 2013 he also
held the title of Harvard College Professor in recognition of his
dedication to teaching. He currently gives lectures as a visiting professor at the New College of the Humanities, a private college in London
Pinker adopted atheism at 13, but at various times was a serious "cultural Jew."Linguistic career
Pinker's research on visual cognition, begun in collaboration with
his thesis adviser, Stephen Kosslyn, showed that mental images represent
scenes and objects as they appear from a specific vantage point (rather
than capturing their intrinsic three-dimensional structure), and thus
correspond to the neuroscientist David Marr's theory of a "two-and-a-half-dimensional sketch." He also showed that this level of representation is used in visual attention, and in object recognition (at least for asymmetrical shapes), contrary to Marr's theory that recognition uses viewpoint-independent representations.
In psycholinguistics, Pinker became known early in his career for promoting computational learning theory as a way to understand language acquisition
in children. He wrote a tutorial review of the field followed by two
books that advanced his own theory of language acquisition, and a series
of experiments on how children acquire the passive, dative, and
locative constructions. These books were Language Learnability and Language Development
(1984), in Pinker's words "outlin[ing] a theory of how children acquire
the words and grammatical structures of their mother tongue", and Learnability and Cognition: The Acquisition of Argument Structure
(1989), in Pinker's words "focus[ing] on one aspect of this process,
the ability to use different kinds of verbs in appropriate sentences,
such as intransitive verbs, transitive verbs, and verbs taking different
combinations of complements and indirect objects".
He then focused on verbs of two kinds that illustrate what he considers
to be the processes required for human language: retrieving whole words
from memory, like the past form of the irregular verb
"bring", namely "brought"; and using rules to combine (parts of) words,
like the past form of the regular verb "walk", namely "walked".
In 1988 Pinker and Alan Prince published a critique of a connectionist
model of the acquisition of the past tense (a textbook problem in
language acquisition), followed by a series of studies of how people use
and acquire the past tense. This included a monograph on children's regularization of irregular forms and his popular 1999 book, Words and Rules: The Ingredients of Language.
Pinker argued that language depends on two things, the associative
remembering of sounds and their meanings in words, and the use of rules
to manipulate symbols for grammar.
He presented evidence against connectionism, where a child would have
to learn all forms of all words and would simply retrieve each needed
form from memory, in favour of the older alternative theory, the use of
words and rules combined by generative phonology.
He showed that mistakes made by children indicate the use of default
rules to add suffixes such as "-ed": for instance 'breaked' and 'comed'
for 'broke' and 'came'. He argued that this shows that irregular
verb-forms in English have to be learnt and retrieved from memory
individually, and that the children making these errors were predicting
the regular "-ed" ending in an open-ended way by applying a mental rule.
This rule for combining verb stems and the usual suffix can be
expressed as Vpast → Vstem
+ d, where V is a verb and d is the regular ending. Pinker further
argued that since the ten most frequently occurring English verbs (be,
have, do, say, make ... ) are all irregular, while 98.2% of the thousand
least common verbs are regular, there is a "massive correlation" of
frequency and irregularity. He explains this by arguing that every
irregular form, such as 'took', 'came' and 'got', has to be committed to
memory by the children in each generation, or else lost, and that the
common forms are the most easily memorized. Any irregular verb that
falls in popularity past a certain point is lost, and all future
generations will treat it as a regular verb instead.
In 1990, Pinker, with Paul Bloom, published a paper arguing that the human language faculty must have evolved through natural selection.
The article provided arguments for a continuity based view of language
evolution, contrary to then current discontinuity based theories that
see language as suddenly appearing with the advent of Homo sapiens
as a kind of evolutionary accident. This discontinuity based view was
prominently argued by two of the main authorities, linguist Noam Chomsky and Stephen Jay Gould.
The paper became widely cited and created renewed interest in the
evolutionary prehistory of language, and has been credited with shifting
the central question of the debate from "did language evolve?" to "how
did language evolve". The article also presaged Pinker's argument in The Language Instinct.
In 2007, Pinker gave his expert interpretation as a linguist of
the wording of a federal law pertaining to the enticement of minors into
illegal sex acts via the internet. This opinion was provided to Alan Dershowitz, a personal friend of Pinker's, who was the defense attorney for Jeffrey Epstein, resulting in a plea deal in which all federal sex trafficking charges against Epstein were dropped.
In 2019, Pinker stated that he was unaware of the nature of the charges
against Epstein, and that he engaged in an unpaid favor for his Harvard
colleague Alan Dershowitz, as he had regularly done. He stated that he regrets writing the letter. Pinker says he never received money from Epstein and met with him three times over more than a dozen years, and said he could never stand Epstein and tried to keep his distance.
Pinker's 1994 The Language Instinct was the first of several books to combine cognitive science with behavioral genetics and evolutionary psychology. It introduces the science of language and popularizes Noam Chomsky's
theory that language is an innate faculty of mind, with the
controversial twist that the faculty for language evolved by natural
selection as an adaptation for communication. Pinker criticizes several
widely held ideas about language – that it needs to be taught, that
people's grammar is poor and getting worse with new ways of speaking, the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis that language limits the kinds of thoughts a person can have, and that other great apes can learn languages.
Pinker sees language as unique to humans, evolved to solve the specific
problem of communication among social hunter-gatherers. He argues that
it is as much an instinct as specialized adaptative behavior in other species, such as a spider's web-weaving or a beaver's dam-building.
Pinker states in his introduction that his ideas are "deeply influenced"
by Chomsky; he also lists scientists whom Chomsky influenced to "open
up whole new areas of language study, from child development and speech
perception to neurology and genetics" — Eric Lenneberg, George Miller, Roger Brown, Morris Halle and Alvin Liberman. Brown mentored Pinker through his thesis; Pinker stated that Brown's "funny and instructive" book Words and Things (1958) was one of the inspirations for The Language Instinct.
There has been debate about the explanatory adequacy of the theory. By 2015, the nativist
views of Pinker and Chomsky had a number of challenges on the grounds
that they had incorrect core assumptions and were inconsistent with
research evidence from psycholinguistics and child language acquisition.
The reality of Pinker's proposed language instinct, and the related
claim that grammar is innate and genetically based, has been contested
by linguists such as Geoffrey Sampson in his 1997 book, Educating Eve: The 'Language Instinct' Debate' Sampson argues that "while it may seem attractive to argue the nature
side of the 'nature versus nurture' debate, the nurture side may better
support the creativity and nobility of the human mind." Sampson denies
there is a language instinct, and argues that children can learn
language because people can learn anything. Others have sought a middle ground between Pinker's nativism and Sampson's culturalism.
The assumptions underlying the nativist view have also been questioned in Jeffrey Elman's Rethinking Innateness: A Connectionist Perspective on Development, which defends the connectionist approach that Pinker attacked. In his 1996 book Impossible Minds, the machine intelligence researcher Igor Aleksander calls The Language Instinct
excellent, and argues that Pinker presents a relatively soft claim for
innatism, accompanied by a strong dislike of the 'Standard Social
Sciences Model' or SSSM (Pinker's term), which supposes that development
is purely dependent on culture. Further, Aleksander writes that while
Pinker criticises some attempts to explain language processing with
neural nets, Pinker later makes use of a neural net to create past tense
verb forms correctly. Aleksander concludes that while he doesn't
support the SSSM, "a cultural repository of language just seems the easy
trick for an efficient evolutionary system armed with an iconic state machine to play."
Two other books, How the Mind Works (1997) and The Blank Slate (2002), broadly surveyed the mind and defended the idea of a complex human nature with many mental faculties that are geneticallyadaptive (Pinker is an ally of Daniel Dennett and Richard Dawkins in many disputes surrounding adaptationism).
Another major theme in Pinker's theories is that human cognition works,
in part, by combinatorial symbol-manipulation, not just associations
among sensory features, as in many connectionist models. On the debate
around The Blank Slate, Pinker called Thomas Sowell's book A Conflict of Visions "wonderful", and explained that "The Tragic Vision" and the "Utopian Vision" are the views of human nature behind right- and left-wing ideologies.
In Words and Rules: the Ingredients of Language
(1999), Pinker argues from his own research that regular and irregular
phenomena are products of computation and memory lookup, respectively,
and that language can be understood as an interaction between the two. "Words and Rules" is also the title of an essay by Pinker outlining many of the topics discussed in the book. Critiqueing the book from the perspective of generative linguisticsCharles Yang, in the London Review of Books, writes that "this book never runs low on hubris or hyperbole".
The book's topic, the English past tense, is in Yang's view
unglamorous, and Pinker's attempts at compromise risk being in no man's
land between rival theories. Giving the example of German, Yang argues
that irregular nouns in that language at least all belong to classes,
governed by rules, and that things get even worse in languages that
attach prefixes and suffixes to make up long 'words': they can't be
learnt individually, as there are untold numbers of combinations. "All
Pinker (and the connectionists) are doing is turning over the rocks at
the base of the intellectual landslide caused by the Chomskian
revolution."
In The Stuff of Thought
(2007), Pinker looks at a wide range of issues around the way words
related to thoughts on the one hand, and to the world outside ourselves
on the other. Given his evolutionary perspective, a central question is
how an intelligent mind capable of abstract thought evolved: how a mind
adapted to Stone Age life could work in the modern world. Many quirks of language are the result.
Pinker is critical of theories about the evolutionary origins of language
that argue that linguistic cognition might have evolved from earlier
musical cognition. He sees language as being tied primarily to the
capacity for logical reasoning, and speculates that human proclivity for
music may be a spandrel
— a feature not adaptive in its own right, but that has persisted
through other traits that are more broadly practical, and thus selected
for. In How the Mind Works, Pinker reiterates Immanuel Kant's
view that music is not in itself an important cognitive phenomenon, but
that it happens to stimulate important auditory and spatio-motor
cognitive functions. Pinker compares music to "auditory cheesecake",
stating that "As far as biological cause and effect is concerned, music
is useless". This argument has been rejected by Daniel Levitin and Joseph Carroll, experts in music cognition, who argue that music has had an important role in the evolution of human cognition.In his book This Is Your Brain On Music, Levitin argues that music could provide adaptive advantage through sexual selection, social bonding, and cognitive development;
he questions the assumption that music is the antecedent to language,
as opposed to its progenitor, noting that many species display
music-like habits that could be seen as precursors to human music.
Pinker has also been critical of "whole language" reading instruction techniques, stating in How the Mind Works, "...the
dominant technique, called 'whole language,' the insight that [spoken]
language is a naturally developing human instinct has been garbled into
the evolutionarily improbable claim that reading is a naturally developing human instinct." In the appendix to the 2007 reprinted edition of The Language Instinct, Pinker cited Why Our Children Can't Read by cognitive psychologist Diane McGuinness as his favorite book on the subject and noted:
One raging public debate involving language went unmentioned in The Language Instinct:
the "reading wars," or dispute over whether children should be
explicitly taught to read by decoding the sounds of words from their
spelling (loosely known as "phonics")
or whether they can develop it instinctively by being immersed in a
text-rich environment (often called "whole language"). I tipped my hand
in the paragraph in [the sixth chapter of the book] which said that
language is an instinct but reading is not.
Like most psycholinguists (but apparently unlike many school boards), I
think it's essential for children to be taught to become aware of
speech sounds and how they are coded in strings of letters.
Violence in the middle ages: detail from "Mars" in Das Mittelalterliche Hausbuch, c. 1475 – 1480. The image is used by Pinker in The Better Angels of Our Nature, with the comment "as the Housebook illustrations suggest, [the knights] did not restrict their killing to other knights".
In The Better Angels of Our Nature, published in 2011, Pinker
argues that violence, including tribal warfare, homicide, cruel
punishments, child abuse, animal cruelty, domestic violence, lynching,
pogroms, and international and civil wars, has decreased over multiple
scales of time and magnitude. Pinker considers it unlikely that human
nature has changed. In his view, it is more likely that human nature
comprises inclinations toward violence and those that counteract them,
the "better angels of our nature". He outlines six "major historical
declines of violence" that all have their own socio/cultural/economic
causes:
"The Pacification Process" – The rise of organized systems of
government has a correlative relationship with the decline in violent
deaths. As states expand they prevent tribal feuding, reducing losses.
"The Civilizing Process" – Consolidation of centralized states and
kingdoms throughout Europe results in the rise of criminal justice and
commercial infrastructure, organizing previously chaotic systems that
could lead to raiding and mass violence.
"The Humanitarian Revolution" – The 18th to 20th century abandonment
of institutionalized violence by the state (breaking on the wheel,
burning at the stake). Suggests this is likely due to the spike in
literacy after the invention of the printing press thereby allowing the
proletariat to question conventional wisdom.
"The Long Peace" – The powers of 20th Century believed that period
of time to be the bloodiest in history. This led to a largely peaceful
65-year period post World War I and World War II. Developed countries
have stopped warring (against each other and colonially), adopted
democracy, and this has led a massive decline (on average) of deaths.
"The New Peace" – The decline in organized conflicts of all kinds since the end of the Cold War.
"The Rights Revolutions" – The reduction of systemic violence at
smaller scales against vulnerable populations (racial minorities, women,
children, homosexuals, animals).
The book was welcomed by many critics and reviewers, who found its
arguments convincing and its synthesis of a large volume of historical
evidence compelling.
It also aroused criticism on a variety of grounds, such as whether
deaths per capita was an appropriate metric, Pinker's liberal humanism,
excessive focus on Europe (though the book covers other areas), the
interpretation of historical data, choice of methodologies, and its
image of indigenous people
Pinker and Nils Brose speaking at a neuroscience conference.
Pinker is a frequent participant in public debates surrounding the
contributions of science to contemporary society. Social commentators
such as Ed West, author of The Diversity Illusion, consider Pinker important and daring in his willingness to confront taboos, as in The Blank Slate. According to West, the doctrine of tabula rasa remained accepted "as fact, rather than fantasy"
a decade after the book's publication. West describes Pinker as "no
polemicist, and he leaves readers to draw their own conclusions".
In January 2005, Pinker defended comments by then-President of Harvard University Lawrence Summers. Summers had speculated that "different availability of aptitude at the high end" may contribute to gender gaps in mathematics and science. In a debate between Pinker and Elizabeth Spelke
on gender and science, Pinker argued in favor of the proposition that
the gender difference in representation in elite universities was
"explainable by some combination of biological differences in average
temperaments and talents interacting with socialization and bias".
In 2007, Pinker was noted for having identified the rename of Phillip Morris to Altria as an "egregious example" of phonesthesia,
with the company attempting to "switch its image from bad people who
sell addictive carcinogens to a place or state marked by altruism and
other lofty values".
In January 2009, Pinker wrote an article about the Personal Genome Project and its possible impact on the understanding of human nature in The New York Times.
He discussed the new developments in epigenetics and gene-environment
interactions in the afterword to the 2016 edition of his book "The Blank
Slate".
In a November 2009 article for The New York Times, Pinker wrote a mixed review of Malcolm Gladwell's essays, criticizing his analytical methods. Gladwell replied, disputing Pinker's comments about the importance of IQ on teaching performance and by analogy, the effect, if any, of draft order on quarterback performance in the National Football League. Advanced NFL Stats
addressed the issue statistically, siding with Pinker and showing that
differences in methodology could explain the two men's differing
opinions.
In an appearance for BBC World Service's
"Exchanges At The Frontier" programme, an audience member questioned
whether the virtuous developments in culture and human nature
(documented in The Better Angels of Our Nature)
could have expressed in our biology either through genetic or
epigenetic expression. Pinker responded that it was unlikely since "some
of the declines have occurred far too rapidly for them to be explicable
by biological evolution which has a speed limit measured in
generations, but crime can plummet in a span of 15 years and some of
these humanitarian reforms like eliminating slavery and torture occurred
in say 50 years".
Helga Vierich and Cathryn Townsend wrote a critical review of Pinker's
sweeping "civilizational" explanations for patterns of human violence
and warfare in response to a lecture he gave at Cambridge University in September 2015.[92]
In his 2018 book Enlightenment Now,
Pinker posited that enlightenment rationality should be defended
against attacks from both the political left and political right. The book received both positive and critical reviews. In a debate with Pinker, post-colonial theorist Homi Bhabha
said that Pinker downplayed the immoral consequences of Enlightenment
philosophy, such as inequality, slavery, imperialism, world wars, and
genocide. Pinker responded that humanity, prior to the Enlightenment,
had been characterized by poverty and disease. Pinker also wrote a detailed response to many such objections to the thesis presented in "Enlightenment Now".
In 2020, an open letter to the Linguistic Society of America
requesting the removal of Pinker from its list of LSA Fellows and its
list of media experts was signed by hundreds of academics.
The letter accused Pinker of a "pattern of drowning out the voices of
people suffering from racist and sexist violence, in particular in the
immediate aftermath of violent acts and/or protests against the systems
that created them", citing as examples six tweets and a phrase used in
his 2011 book.
Pinker said that through this letter he was being threatened by "a
regime of intimidation that constricts the theatre of ideas Several academics criticized the letter and expressed strong support for Pinker. Conor Friedersdorf, writing in The Atlantic, criticized the letter for engaging in guilt by association and for creating a "chilling effect" on the speech of non-tenured academics, and Mother Jones called it "factually flawed" and "dishonest".
The executive committee of the Linguistic Society of America issued a
letter stating that the group "is committed to intellectual freedom and
professional responsibility. It is not the mission of the Society to
control the opinions of its members, nor their expression. Inclusion and
civility are crucial to productive scholarly work. And inclusion means
hearing (not necessarily accepting) all points of view, even those that
may be objectionable to some."
Pinker was named one of Time's 100 most influential people in the world in 2004 and one of Prospect and Foreign Policy's 100 top public intellectuals in both years the poll was carried out, 2005 and 2008; in 2010 and 2011 he was named by Foreign Policy to its list of top global thinkers. In 2016, he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences.
From 2008 to 2018, Pinker chaired the Usage Panel of the American Heritage Dictionary. He wrote the essay on usage for the fifth edition of the Dictionary, published in 2011.
In February 2001, Pinker, "whose hair has long been the object of admiration, and envy, and intense study", was nominated by acclamation as the first member of the Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists (LFHCfS) organized by the Annals of Improbable Research.
Bibliography
Books
Language Learnability and Language Development (1984)
Visual Cognition (1985)
Connections and Symbols (1988)
Learnability and Cognition: The Acquisition of Argument Structure (1989)
Pinker, S. (2003) "Language as an adaptation to the cognitive niche" In M. Christiansen & S. Kirby (Eds.), Language evolution: States of the Art New York: Oxford University Press.
Jackendoff, R.; Pinker, S.
(2005). "The nature of the language faculty and its implications for
evolution of language" (Reply to Fitch, Hauser, & Chomsky)". Cognition. 97 (2): 211–225. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2005.04.006. S2CID6571737.
Gunslingers in the 19th century. This is the Ned Christie posse.
Gunslingers/ˈɡʌnslɪŋər/ or gunfighters (also called gunmen in the 19th and early 20th centuries) were individuals in the American Old West
who gained a reputation of being dangerous with a gun and participated
in gunfights and shootouts. Today, the term "gunslinger" is more or less
used to denote someone who is quick on the draw with a pistol, but can also refer to riflemen and shotgun messengers. The gunfighter is also one of the most popular characters in the Western genre and has appeared in associated films, video games, and literature.
The term "gun slinger" was used in the Western film Drag Harlan (1920). The word was soon adopted by other Western writers, such as Zane Grey, and became common usage. In his introduction to The Shootist (1976), author Glendon Swarthout
says "gunslinger" and "gunfighter" are modern terms, and the more
authentic terms for the period would have been "gunman", "pistoleer",
"shootist," or "bad man" (sometimes written as "badman"). Swarthout
seems to have been correct about "gunslinger", but the term "gunfighter"
existed in several newspapers in the 1870s, and as such the term
existed in the 19th century. Bat Masterson
used the term "gunfighter" in the newspaper articles which he wrote
about the lawmen and outlaws whom he had known. However, Joseph Rosa
noted that, even though Masterson used the term "gunfighter", he
"preferred the term 'mankiller'" when discussing these individuals. Clay Allison (1841–1887), a notorious New Mexico and Texas gunman and cattleman, originated the term "shootist".
Usage
Often, the term has been applied to men who would hire out for contract killings or at a ranch embroiled in a range war where they would earn "fighting wages". Others, like Billy the Kid, were notorious bandits, and still others were lawmen like Pat Garrett and Wyatt Earp. A gunfighter could be an outlaw—a robber
or murderer who took advantage of the wilderness of the frontier to
hide from genteel society and to make periodic raids on it. The
gunfighter could also be an agent of the state, archetypically a lone avenger, but more often a sheriff, whose duty was to face the outlaw and bring him to justice or to personally administer it. There were also a few historical cowboys who were actual gunfighters, such as the outlaw cowboy gang who participated in the bloody Skeleton Canyon Massacre.
Gunslingers frequently appear as stock characters in Western movies and novels, along with cowboys. Often, the hero of a Western meets his opposite "double", a mirror of his own evil side that he has to destroy.
Western gunslinger heroes are portrayed as local lawmen or
enforcement officers, ranchers, army officers, cowboys, territorial
marshals, nomadic loners, or skilled fast-draw artists. They are
normally masculine persons of integrity and principle – courageous,
moral, tough, solid, and self-sufficient, maverick characters (often
with trusty sidekicks), possessing an independent and honorable attitude
(but often characterized as slow-talking). They are depicted as similar to a knight-errant,
wandering from place to place with no particular direction, often
facing curious and hostile enemies, while saving individuals or
communities from those enemies in terms of chivalry.
The Western hero usually stands alone and faces danger on his own,
commonly against lawlessness, with an expert display of his physical
skills (roping, gun-play, horse-handling, pioneering abilities, etc.).
In films, the gunslinger often possesses a nearly superhuman speed and skill with the revolver. Twirling pistols, lightning draws, and trick shots are standard fare for the gunmen of the big screen.
In the real world, however, gunmen who relied on flashy tricks and
theatrics died quickly, and most gunslingers took a much more practical
approach to their weapons. Real gunslingers did not shoot to disarm or
to impress, but to kill.
Another classic bit of cinema that is largely a myth is the
showdown at high noon, where two well-matched gunslingers agree to meet
for a climactic formal duel. These duels did occasionally happen, as in the case of the Luke Short – Jim Courtright duel,
but gunfights were typically more spontaneous, a fight that turned
deadly when one side reached for a weapon, and no one knew who actually
won the fight for several minutes until the air finally cleared of
smoke.
Gunfights could be won by simple distraction, or pistols could be
emptied as gunmen fought from behind cover without injury. When a gunman
did square off, it rarely was with another gunfighter. Gunslingers
usually gave each other a wide berth, and it was uncommon for two
well-known gunslingers to face off.
The gunslinger's reputation often was as valuable as any skills
possessed. In Western films and books, young toughs often challenge
experienced gunmen with the hopes of building a reputation, but this
rarely happened in real life. A strong reputation was enough to keep
others civil and often would spare a gunfighter from conflict. Even
other gunslingers were likely to avoid any unnecessary confrontation.
In the days of the Old West, tales tended to grow with repeated
telling, and a single fight might grow into a career-making reputation. For instance, the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral made legends of Wyatt Earp and the Outlaw Cowboy gang, but they were relatively minor figures before that conflict. Some gunslingers, such as Bat Masterson, actively engaged in self-promotion. Johnny Ringo built a reputation as a gunslinger while never taking part in a gunfight or killing unarmed civilians.
Fact and fiction
Gunfighters fighting off an Indian attack
Most gunfights are portrayed in films or books as having two men
square off, waiting for one to make the first move. This was rarely the
case. Often, a gunfight was spur-of-the-moment, with one drawing his
pistol, and the other reacting. Often it would develop into a shootout
where both men bolted for cover.
In popular folklore, men who held noteworthy reputations as a
gunfighter were eager to match up against another gunman with the same
reputation. On the contrary, in cases where two men held a similar
reputation, both would avoid confrontation with one another whenever
possible.
They rarely took undue risks, and usually weighed their options before
confronting another well-known gunman. This respect for one another is
why most famous gunfights were rarely two or more well-known gunmen
matched up against one another, but rather one notable gunman against a
lesser-known opponent or opponents.
These fights were usually close-up and personal, with a number of
shots blasted from pistols, often resulting in innocent bystanders hit
by bullets gone wild. Much of the time, it would be difficult to tell
who had "won" the gunfight for several minutes, as the black powder
smoke from the pistols cleared the air.
How famous gunfighters died is as varied as each man. Many well-known
gunfighters were so feared by the public because of their reputation
that when they were killed, they died as a result of ambush rather than going down in a "blaze of glory". Others died secluded deaths either from old age or illness.
Mythology and folklore often exaggerate the skills of famous
gunfighters. Most of these historical figures were not known to be
capable of trick shooting, nor did they necessarily have a reputation
for precision sharpshooting. Such tropes that are frequently seen in
Westerns include shooting the center of a coin, stylistic pistol
twirling, glancing shots that intentionally only graze an opponent (the
bullet through the hat being an example), shooting an opponent's belt
buckle (thus dropping his pants), a bullet cutting the hangman's rope,
or shooting the guns out of opponents' hands (typically as an
alternative to killing). The last was debunked by Mythbusters as an impossibility, as unjacketed bullets tend to shatter into fragments that can hurt or even kill. Ed McGivern dispelled the myth of the inaccuracy of pistol fanning by shooting tight groups while fanning the revolver.
In Western movies, the characters' gun belts are often worn low
on the hip and outer thigh, with the holster cut away around the
pistol's trigger and grip for a smooth, fast draw. This type of holster
is a Hollywood anachronism. Fast-draw artists can be distinguished from other movie cowboys because their guns will often be tied to their thigh. Long before holsters were steel-lined, they were soft and supple for comfortable all-day wear. A gunfighter would use tie-downs to keep his pistol
from catching on the holster while drawing. Most of the time,
gunfighters would just hide their pistols in their pockets and
waistbands. Wild Bill Hickok popularized the butt-forward holster type, which worked better on horseback. Other gunfighters would use bridgeport rigs that gave a faster and easier draw. Revolvers were a popular weapon to gunfighters who were horsemen, cowboys, and lawmen because of their concealability and effectiveness on horseback. The Winchester rifle
was also a popular weapon among gunfighters. Dubbed the "Gun that Won
the West", it was widely used during the settlement of the American
frontier. Shotguns were also a popular weapon for "express messengers"
and guards, especially those on stagecoaches and trains who were in
charge of overseeing and guarding a valuable private shipment.
Quick draw and hip shooting was a rare skill in the West, and only a handful of historically known gunslingers were known to be fast, such as Luke Short, John Wesley Hardin, and Wild Bill Hickok. Shooting a pistol with one hand is normally associated with gunslingers, and is also a standard for them of the era to carry two guns and fire ambidextrously. Capt. Jonathan R. Davis carried two revolvers in his iconic gunfight, while Jesse James himself carried over half a dozen revolvers in many of his gunfights.
The most important lesson I learned ... was that the winner of a
gunplay usually was the one who took his time. The second was that, if I
hoped to live on the frontier, I would shun flashy
trick-shooting—grandstand play—as I would poison ... In all my life as a
frontier peace officer, I did not know a really proficient gunfighter
who had anything but contempt for the gun-fanner, or the man who
literally shot from the hip...
The image of a Wild West filled with countless gunfights was a myth
generated primarily by dime-novel authors in the late 19th century. An
estimate of 20,000 men in the American West were killed by gunshot
between 1866 and 1900, and over 21,586 total casualties during the American Indian Wars from 1850 to 1890. The most notable and well-known took place in the states/territories of Arizona, New Mexico, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas.
Actual gunfights in the Old West were very rare, very few and far
between, but when gunfights did occur, the cause for each varied. Some were simply the result of the heat of the moment, while others were longstanding feuds, or between bandits and lawmen. Lawless violence such as range wars like the Lincoln County War and clashes with Indians were also a cause.
Some of these shootouts became famous, while others faded into history
with only a few accounts surviving. To prevent gunfights from happening,
many cities in the American frontier, such as Dodge City and Tombstone, put up a local ordinance to prohibit firearms in the area.
The Gunfight at the OK Corral is a famous example of a real-life western shootout, between the Earp Brothers together with Doc Holliday, and the Clanton-McLaury gang. It lasted only 30 seconds, contrary to many movie adaptations.
The gunfight itself did not actually happen in the corral, but in a
vacant lot outside of it. The shooting started when Billy Clanton and
Frank McLaury cocked their pistols. Both parties simultaneously drew
their guns, which added to the confusion of who fired first. It is not
known who fired the first shot, but Wyatt's bullet was the first to hit,
tearing through Frank McLaury's belly and sending McLaury's own shot
wild through Wyatt's coattail. Billy Clanton fired at Virgil, but his
shot also went astray when he was hit with Morgan's shot through his
ribcage. Billy Claiborne ran as soon as shots were fired and was already
out of sight. Ike Clanton panicked as well and ran towards Wyatt
pleading for his life. "Go to fighting or get away!", Wyatt yelled and
watched Ike desert his brother Billy and run. Doc instantly killed Tom
with blasts from his shotgun. Frank was running to Fremont Street, and
he challenged Holliday for killing his brother, but Doc dropped his
shotgun, drew his pistol, and shot Frank in the right temple.
Wounded and dying, Billy Clanton fired blindly into the gun smoke
encircling him, striking Virgil's leg. Wyatt responded by sending
several rounds into Billy.
On April 14, 1881, lawman Dallas Stoudenmire participated in a gunfight in El Paso, Texas which many dubbed the Four Dead in Five Seconds Gunfight,
in which he killed three of the four fatalities with his twin .44
caliber Colt revolvers. One of those killed was an innocent Mexican
bystander. Less than a year after these incidents, he would kill as many as six more men in gunfights while in the line of duty.
Another well-documented gunfight resulted in the most kills by one person in a single event, when Capt. Jonathan R. Davis shot eleven bandits single-handedly on 19 December 1854.
Unknown to Davis and his companions, a band of robbers was lying in
wait in the canyon brush near the trail. They were a typically diverse
and motley group of Gold Rush bandits: two Americans, one Frenchman, two
Britons, five Sydney Ducks,
and four Mexicans. As Captain Davis and his companions trudged on foot,
the bandit gang charged out of the brush, pistols flaming. James
McDonald died instantly, without time to draw his revolver or react in
any way. Dr. Bolivar managed to get his six-shooter out and fire twice
at the highwaymen before he dropped, badly wounded. Captain Davis later
described himself as being "in a fever of excitement at the time."
Unfazed, he stood his ground, pulling out both pistols and firing a
barrage at the charging outlaws. He shot down his assailants, one after
another. The outlaws' bullets tore at Davis's clothing, but caused only
two slight flesh wounds. Within moments, seven of the bandits were dead
or dying on the ground and Davis's pistols were empty. Four of the
remaining robbers now closed in on the captain to finish him off. Davis
whipped out his Bowie knife,
and quickly warded off the thrusts from the two of the bandits. He
stabbed one of them to death; the other he disarmed by knocking the
knife from his grasp and slicing off his nose and a finger of his right
hand. The two last attackers were the men who had been wounded in a
previous bandit raid. Despite their weakened condition, they foolishly
approached Davis with drawn knives. The captain reacted in an instant.
Slashing with his heavy Bowie, he killed them both.
On December 1, 1884, a town sheriff named Elfego Baca came face-to-face against 80 gunmen which became known as the Frisco shootout.
The battle started when Baca arrested a cowboy who had shot him. In
turn the cowboy called upon 80 of his associates to murder Baca. Baca
took refuge in an adobe house, and over the course of a 36-hour siege,
the gunmen put 400 bullet holes in the house (some accounts say a total
of 4,000 shots) without touching Baca. He in turn killed 4 of them and
wounded 8. When the shooting was over as the attackers finally ran out
of ammo, Baca strolled out of the house unscathed. Baca went on to a
distinguished career as a lawyer and legislator and died in his bed in
1945, age 80.
In January 1887 Commodore Perry Owens took office as Sheriff of Apache County, Arizona. He sent two deputies to arrest Ike Clanton.
Clanton had instigated the Gunfight at the OK Corral and was charged
with the later ambush shooting of Virgil Earp. Wyatt Earp searched for
Ike Clanton in his vendetta, but never found him – Ike moved north to
Apache County to continue rustling cattle and killing. Owens' two
deputies killed Ike Clanton; Phin Clanton was arrested; three other gang
members were killed; and the Clanton gang was done. Then Sheriff Owens
turned his attention to the Blevins family, the other rustling gang in
the county. In June 1887 Old Man Blevins disappeared, presumably killed
by the Tewksbury faction of the Pleasant Valley War.
The Blevins sons searched for their father and in August Hamp Blevins
and another were killed by the Tewksbury side. So Andy Blevins (aka
Cooper) ambushed and killed John Tewksbury and Bill Jacobs in revenge.
Blevins returned to Holbrook
and was heard bragging about his killings. Sheriff Owens had inherited a
warrant for Andy Blevins' (Cooper) arrest for horse theft so he rode to
Holbook on September 2, 1887. Sheriff Owens had hunted buffalo for the
railroad and could shoot his Winchester from the hip with great
accuracy. Cradling his Winchester rifle in his arm, Sheriff Owens
knocked on the Blevins' door. Andy Blevins answered with a pistol in
hand, the lawman told him to come out, that he had a warrant for arrest.
Blevins refused and tried to close the door. Owens shot his rifle from
his hip through the door, hitting Andy Blevins in the stomach. Andy's
half-brother, John Blevins, pushed a pistol out the door to Owens' right
and fired at the Sheriff. He missed and Owens shot John Blevins in the
arm, putting him out of the fight. Owens saw Andy Blevins in the window
moving to shoot back. Owens shot through the wall, striking Andy in the
right hip – he died that night. Mose Roberts, boarding with the family,
jumped out of a side window with a pistol. Sheriff Owens shot him
through his back and chest, killing him. Fifteen-year-old Samuel Houston
Blevins ran out the front door, with his brother's revolver, and yelled
"I'll get him." His mother ran out after him. Owens shot and Sam fell
backward, dying in his mother's arms. The shootout took less than one
minute and made Owens a legend. In eight months Sheriff Owens had rid
Apache County of two notorious gangs of rustlers and killers.
In many early western films and literature, Native Americans were
often portrayed as savages; having conflicts and battles against
gunfighters and White settlements. According to the U.S. Bureau of the Census
(1894), an estimate of 19,000 White men, women and children were killed
while the Indians killed numbered between 30,000 and 45,000 casualties
during the American Indian Wars. Gunfighters in history did fight Native Americans. Among them was civilian Billy Dixon, who made one of the longest recorded sniper kills, by shooting an Indian off his horse almost a mile away with his Sharps rifle, during a standoff in the Second Battle of Adobe Walls.
General George S. Patton
himself had a gunfight when he was a young second lieutenant chasing
Pancho Villa all over northern Mexico in 1916. Patton and 10 enlisted
men had been sent to San Miguelito Ranch to look for Villa, who had
recently raided the city of Columbus, New Mexico. Patton positioned his
men by the south gate and was making his way up to the north gate when a
trio of Villa's men came into the ranch on horseback. Patton drew his
obsolete single-action Colt Peacemaker revolver and shot two of the men.
The first man had been fatally wounded in the exchange and tried to
draw his pistol before Patton killed him with a single shot. After his
troops took down the remaining outlaw, Patton tied the three dead men to
the hood of his touring car and drove the bodies back to his commanding
officer.
Real-life Wild West duels
Wild Bill Hickok after killing Davis Tutt in a duel. Harper's New Monthly Magazine, February 1867
The image of two gunslingers with violent reputation squaring off in a street is a Hollywood invention. However, face-to-face fast draw shootouts did occur in the real West. These duels were first recorded in the South, brought by emigrants to the American Frontier as a crude form of the "code duello,"
a highly formalized means of solving disputes between gentlemen with
swords or guns that had its origins in European chivalry.
By the second half of the 19th century, few Americans still fought
duels to solve their problems, and became a thing of the past in the
United States by the start of the 20th century. Writer Wyatt-Brown in his book "Southern Honor: Ethics and Behavior in the Old South"
described dueling in the American frontier as a "custom", and was
primarily used for teenage disputes, rise in ranking, status and
scapegoating.
The most famous and well-recorded duel occurred on 21 July 1865, in Springfield, Missouri. Wild Bill Hickok
and Davis Tutt quarreled over cards and decided to have a gunfight.
They arranged to walk towards each other at 6 p.m. Wild Bill's armed
presence caused the crowd to immediately scatter to the safety of nearby
buildings, leaving Tutt alone in the northwestern corner of the square.
When they were about 50 yards apart, both men drew their guns. The two
fired at the same time, but Hickok's shot hit Tutt in the heart, while
Tutt's shot missed. This was the first recorded example of two men
taking part in a quick-draw duel. The following month Hickok was
acquitted after pleading self-defense. The first story of the shootout
was detailed in an article in Harper's Magazine in 1867, and became a staple of the gunslinger legend.
The famous lawman Wyatt Earp gave an account of having participated a duel once during his vendetta. While in the South Pass of the Dragoon Mountains,
Earp's posse found one of the outlaw cowboys named "Indian Charlie"
Cruz. One account says that after the party recognized Cruz, they chased
him down and a gunfight ensued.
The party managed to capture Cruz and he confessed to have taken part
in Morgan's murder, and that he identified Stilwell, Hank Swilling,
Curly Bill and Johnny Ringo as other of Morgan's killers. During that
time, Wyatt allowed Cruz to keep his revolver to "give him a chance to
fight like a man." After the confession, Wyatt told Cruz to draw,
challenging him to a duel, and the posse counted to three before Wyatt
gunned Cruz down.
Doc Holliday himself had a duel in a saloon in Las Vegas, New Mexico.
One of the women who worked there had an ex-boyfriend named Mike Gordon
who had just been discharged from the Army. Gordon wanted her to stop
working. When she told him to leave her alone, he became angry, went
outside the saloon, and started shooting out the windows with his
pistol. As bullets went through the saloon, Doc unflinching, holstered
his Colt Peacemaker
revolver, and walked outside. Gordon then started shooting at him but
missed. Holliday then drew his pistol and shot Gordon at long range with
one shot. He then went back to the saloon. Gordon died the next day and
Holliday fled. Doc Holliday has also been credited with wounding and
shooting a pistol out of saloon owner Milt Joyce's hand when he tried to
brandish it at Holliday.
Another well-known duel in the American West happened in Fort Worth, Texas, and was known as the Luke Short-Jim Courtright Duel. Timothy Isaiah "Longhair Jim" Courtright
was running the T.I.C. Commercial agency in Fort Worth, which provided
"protection" to gambling dens and saloons in return for a portion of
their profits. At the same time, Luke Short,
a former friend of Courtright's, was running the White Elephant Saloon
and Jim was trying to get Short to utilize his services. But the Dodge
City gunfighter told Courtright to "go to Hell," that he could do
anything that was necessary to take care of his business. On February 8,
1887, the two quarreled, and with Bat Masterson
at Short's side, Courtright and Short dueled in the street. They drew
their pistols at close range, and Short fired first, blowing off
Courtright's thumb. Courtright attempted the "border shift", a move
where a gunfighter switches his gun to his uninjured hand, but he was
too slow. Short shot him in the chest, killing him.
The Long Branch Saloon Shootout, involving Levi Richardson, a buffalo hunter, and "Cockeyed Frank" Loving, a professional gambler, happened on April 5, 1879.
Richardson had developed some affection for Loving's wife Mattie, and
the two began to argue about her. In the saloon, Frank sat down at a
long table, Richardson turned around and took a seat at the same table.
The two were then heard speaking in low voices. After the conversation,
Richardson drew his pistol, and Loving drew his in response. The Long
Branch Saloon was then filled with smoke. Dodge City Marshal Charlie
Bassett, who was in Beatty & Kelley's Saloon, heard the shots and
came running. Both men were still standing, although Richardson had
fired five shots from his gun and Loving's Remington No. 44 was empty.
Deputy Sheriff Duffey threw Richardson down in a chair and took his gun,
while Bassett disarmed Loving. Richardson then got up and started
toward the billiard table, when he fell to the floor with a fatal
gunshot in the chest, as well as a shot through the side and another
through the right arm. Frank Loving, who had only a slight scratch on
the hand, was immediately taken to jail. Two days later, the coroner's
inquest ruled that the killing had been in self-defense and Loving was
immediately released.
On March 9, 1877, gamblers Jim Levy and Charlie Harrison argued over a game of cards in a saloon in Cheyenne, Wyoming.
They met in an alley following an argument about a card game. Harrison
shot first, but missed. Levy aimed carefully and hit Harrison, who died a
week later.
Not as well known today but famous in his time was the dapper, derby-wearing train robber Marion Hedgepeth, who despite his swell appearance, "was a deadly killer and one of the fastest guns in the Wild, Wild West". William Pinkerton, whose National Detective Agency
had sought to capture Hedgepeth and his gang for years, noted that
Hedgepeth once gunned down another outlaw who had already unholstered
his pistol before Hedgepath had drawn his revolver. The infamous assassin Tom Horn
was also said to have participated in a duel with a second lieutenant
from the Mexican Army, due to a dispute with a prostitute when he was
twenty-six years old. Gunfighters Jim Levy and Tom Carberry became infamous for participating in at least two quick draw duels in their lifetimes.
Living on reputation
Most
Old West men who were labeled as being "gunfighters" did not kill
nearly as many men in gunfights as they were given credit for, if any at
all. They were often labeled as such due to one particular instance,
which developed from rumors into them having been involved in many more
events than they actually were. Often their reputation was as much
"self-promotion" as anything else; such was the case of Bat Masterson. Wyatt Earp with his brothers Morgan and Virgil along with Doc Holliday killed three outlaw Cowboys in the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, Arizona Territory. He has been said to have been involved in more than one hundred gunfights in his lifetime. But Prof. Bill O'Neal cites just five incidents in his Encyclopedia of Western Gunfighters.
Earp expressed his dismay about the controversy that followed him his
entire life. He wrote in a letter to John Hays Hammond on May 21, 1925,
that "notoriety had been the bane of my life."
After his brother Virgil was maimed in an ambush and Morgan was
assassinated by hidden assailants, the men suspected of involvement were
provided alibis by fellow Cowboys and released without trial. Wyatt and
his brother Warren set out on a vendetta ride
to locate and kill those they felt were responsible. Wyatt has been
portrayed in a number of films and books as a fearless Western hero. He is often viewed as the central character and hero of the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral,
at least in part because he was the only one who was not wounded or
killed. In fact, his brother, Tombstone Marshal and Deputy U.S. Marshal Virgil Earp had considerably more experience with weapons and combat as a Union soldier in the Civil War, and in law enforcement as a sheriff, constable, and marshal. As city marshal, Virgil made the decision to disarm the Cowboys in Tombstone and requested Wyatt's assistance. But because Wyatt outlived Virgil and due to a creative biography, Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal
published two years after Wyatt's death, Wyatt became famous and the
subject of various movies, television shows, biographies and works of
fiction.
There are no records to support the reputation that Johnny Ringo developed.
Of the documented instances where Ringo killed men, they were unarmed,
and there is no evidence to support his participation in a single
gunfight. Others deserved the reputation associated with them. Jim Courtright and Dallas Stoudenmire both killed several men in gunfights both as lawmen and as civilians. Clay Allison and Ben Thompson had well-deserved reputations. At the same time, gunmen like Scott Cooley are all but unknown, when they actually led a life reflective of what most would consider a gunfighter to be.
In other cases, certain gunfighters were possibly confused, over time,
with being someone else with a similar name. The most well known of Butch Cassidy's Wild Bunch gang, the Sundance Kid, was in reality only known to have been in one shootout during his lifetime, and no gunfights. Some historians have since stated that it is possible that over time he was confused with another Wild Bunch member, Kid Curry,
who was without a doubt the most dangerous member of the gang, having
killed many lawmen and civilians during his lifetime before being killed
himself. Hence, it is the Sundance Kid who is better known.
Outlaw or lawman
It is often difficult to separate lawmen of the Old West from outlaws of the Old West. In many cases, the term gunfighter
was applied to constables. Despite idealistic portrayals in television,
movies, and even in history books, very few lawmen/gunfighters could
claim their law enforcement role as their only source of employment.
Unlike contemporary peace officers, these lawmen generally pursued other
occupations, often earning money as gamblers, business owners, or
outlaws—as was the case with "Curly" Bill Brocius, who, while always referred to as an outlaw, served as a deputy sheriff under sheriff Johnny Behan.
Many shootouts involving lawmen were caused by disputes arising from
these alternative occupations, rather than the lawman's attempts to
enforce the law.
Tom Horn, historically cited as an assassin, served both as a deputy sheriff and as a Pinkerton detective, a job in which he shot at least three people as a killer for hire. Ben Thompson, best known as a gunfighter and gambler, was a very successful chief of police in Austin, Texas. King Fisher had great success as a county sheriff in Texas. Doc Holliday and Billy the Kid both wore badges as lawmen at least once. "Big" Steve Long served as deputy marshal for Laramie, Wyoming,
while the entire time committing murders and forced theft of land
deeds. A town with a substantial violent crime rate would often turn to a
known gunman as their town marshal, chief, or sheriff, in the hopes
that the gunman could stem the violence and bring order.
Known gunmen/lawmen were generally effective, and in time the
violence would subside, usually after the gunman/lawman had been
involved in several shooting incidents, eventually leading to a
substantial and well earned fear that kept everyone in line. At times they were hired by cattlemen or other prominent figures to serve as henchmen
or enforcers during cattle wars. Although sanctioned by law enforcement
officials, the gunmen were not always actually deputized. Sometimes,
however, just to make things "official", they would go through the
formality of deputization. A case in point: the service of the Jesse Evans Gang, and outlaw Jesse Evans himself, as agents for the Murphy-Dolan faction during the Lincoln County War. While technically working as lawmen, they were little more than hired guns.
Usually, when a gunman was hired by a town as town marshal, they
received the full support of the townspeople until order was restored,
at which point the town would tactfully indicate it was time for a
change to a less dangerous lawman who relied more on respect than fear
to enforce the law. A good example was the 1882 decision by the El Paso, Texas, town council to dismiss Town Marshal Dallas Stoudenmire.
He entered the council hall and dared the councilors to try to take his
guns or his job, at which point they immediately changed their mind,
saying he could keep his job. He resigned on his own a couple of days
later.
People relive the Wild West both historically and in popular culture by participating in cowboy action shooting events,
where each gunslinger adopts his or her own look representing a
character from Western life in the late 1800s, and as part of that
character, chooses an alias to go by. The sport originated in Southern
California, USA, in the early 1980s but is now practiced in many places
with several sanctioning organizations including the Single Action
Shooting Society (SASS), Western Action Shootists Association (WASA),
and National Congress of Old West Shooters (NCOWS), as well as others in
the US and in other countries. There are different categories shooters
can compete in. There's the gunfighter, frontiersman, classic cowboy and
duelist – each with its own specifications.
Alongside the iconic cowboy, gunfighters have become a cultural image of the American people abroad, and also as an idealized image of violence, frontier justice, and adventure.
Even outside of the Western genre, the term 'gunslinger' has been used
in modern times to describe someone who is fast and accurate with
pistols, either in real life or in other fictional action genre.
The quick draw which gunfighters help popularize, is still an important skill in the American military and law enforcement communities.In popular culture
Gunfighters have been featured in media even outside the Western genre, often combined with other elements and genres, mainly science-fiction Space Westerns, steampunk, and the contemporary setting. Abilities, clothing and attitude associated with gunfighters are seen in many other genres. An example of these is Han shot first, in which Han Solo, a gunfighter-like protagonist in Star Wars, kills his opponent with a subtle, under-the-table draw. He also wore his holster low on, and tied to, the thigh with a cutaway for the trigger. Roland Deschain from the fantasy series The Dark Tower is a gunfighter pitted against fantasy-themed monsters and enemies. Inspired by the "Man with No Name"
and other spaghetti-western characters, he himself is detached or
unsympathetic, often reacting as uncaring or angry at signs of cowardice
or self-pity, yet he possesses a strong sense of heroism, often
attempting to help those in need, a morality much seen in Westerns.
Jonah Hex, from DC Comics, is a ruthless bounty hunter bound by a personal code of honor to protect and avenge the innocent. IGN ranked Jonah Hex the 73rd greatest comic book hero of all time. Throughout the DC Universe,
Hex has been, on many occasions, transported from the Old West to the
contemporary setting and beyond. Even in an unfamiliar territory and
time period, Hex managed to outgun his enemies with more advanced
weaponry. Two-Gun Kid is another comic book gunfighter from Marvel Comics. Skilled with revolvers, he has aided many super-heroes in future timelines, most notably She-Hulk.
Many Japanese manga and anime have also adopted the western genre. Yasuhiro Nightow is known for creating the space westernTrigun. The story's protagonist, Vash the Stampede, is a wandering gunslinger with a dark past. Unlike other violence-themed gunslingers, Vash carries a Shane-like pacifist attitude, and avoids killing men, even dangerous enemies. Behind him is the gun-toting priest named Nicholas D. Wolfwood,
who carries with him a heavy machine gun and rocket launcher shaped
like a cross. Nicholas is more violent than Vash, and the two would
often argue about killing opponents. Other western genre themed manga
and anime include Cowboy Bebop and Kino's Journey, who both incorporate knight-errant gunslinger themes.
Modern-day western gunslingers have also appeared in recent Neo-Westerns. Raylan Givens from the television series Justified shares the same ambiguous moral code of an Old West sheriff, even using a fast draw to dispatch his enemies. The hitman Anton Chigurh from No Country For Old Men shares many elements of a hunted outlaw. Additionally, the comic book character Vigilante is a self-proclaimed gunfighter born in the 1940s.
Gunfighters have also been featured in many video games,
both in traditional Old West, and in contemporary and future settings.
Colton White was the protagonist of 2005's best-selling western video
game Gun. Another well-known video game Western protagonist is John Marston from Red Dead Redemption, who was nominated for 2010 Spike's Video Game Awards, as well as his friend Arthur Morgan in Red Dead Redemption 2. The New York Times
stated: "he and his creators conjure such a convincing, cohesive and
enthralling re-imagination of the real world that it sets a new standard
for sophistication and ambition in electronic gaming." The main character Caleb in the video games Blood and Blood II: The Chosen is also a former Old West gunfighter. Gunfighter is also a callsign for a group of two Apache Helicopters in the video game Medal of Honor. They appear on mission named "Gunfighters", and the player will act as Captain Brad "Hawk" Hawkins from 1st Aviation Regiment.
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