Talk:Just-so story

Pourquois stories
Another name for just-so stories is "pourquois stories." Which of these two terms is more commonly used? Joyous | Talk 21:08, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

I have never heard of pourquois stories (I understand it is french for why but I've never heard the term). Who uses it? I think the term just-so story is current, or at least readily understood, among American biologists and anthropologists. I heard if from a physical anthropologist and I think I have seen it in print in a popular science article context. Who uses pourquois? alteripse 03:23, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

Maybe "pourquois" is used more in the education field, where these stories often make up study units. That would explain why I'm more familiar with that term. Joyous | Talk 03:29, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

Does the phrase carry the same dismissive connotation in education? alteripse 03:41, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

Nnnnoooo, I don't think so. Elementary and middle school reading programs often use them within the study of the folklore of a particular region. Kids are often encouraged to write their own pourquoi stories, because the brainstorming procedure is so easy. They just have to think of a characteristic of an animal, then work backwards to create a story about how it came to be that way. Joyous | Talk 04:26, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

Then they sound like 2 different labels for 2 different purposes used by 2 different communities and only partially referring to the same thing. Why don't you write a brief definition of pourquois story and we can link them? alteripse 07:39, 20 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Affirm that recommendation for a separate page and then provide cross links between them. While similar, pourquois stories sound more positive similar to Kiplings Just So Stories. A Just-so story here has more of a negative context. There are also relatively few references to pourquois stories compared to numerous Just-so story examples. e.g., see Amazon, vs scholar.google.com. DLH (talk) 22:20, 30 January 2008 (UTC)
 * I agree too with alteripse, no need for merge. Mathmo Talk 03:00, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Major issue is spelling and capitalization: pourquoi vs pourquois. Recommend cross links and disambiguation pages. DLH (talk) 22:36, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Are you sure that Kipling merely popularized the term "just-so story"? I am not aware of the term being used to mean a pourquois story prior to Kipling. Moreover, I do not believe that the etiological aspect of the stories is what Kipling had in mind when he called his stories "just-so" stories. Rather, I believe he was referring to the constant use of precise repetition, which is also a characteristic of the stories. For example, the great, gray, green, greasy Limpopo River is never called just "the river" or even "the Limpopo River," but always the "great, gray, green, greasy Limpopo River," as if the storyteller, in order to tell the story correctly, must always refer to it "just so." Since Kipling's stories are the best-known examples of etiological (or pourquois) stories, and since both "etiological" and "pourquois" are rather unfriendly, academic terms, the term "just-so story" was borrowed for this purpose, even though it is not what Kipling intended. User:Bruce Thompson October 2009 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.136.38.126 (talk) 18:48, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

I am quite confident that Kipling originated the term, and this is reflected in the existing citations. The stories were "Just So" stories only because Kipling's daughter demanded they be told to her "Just so" (exactly verbatim) every night. He published them in 1902. Gould, who in 1968 originated the term as used in this article is making an explicit reference to Kipling's stories. I have updated the article to reflect this. 173.44.75.158 (talk) 03:07, 11 August 2017 (UTC) ---

Quotes & References
Moved quotes and reference examples here after they were deleted from Just So StoriesDLH 01:58, 30 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Thanks, this is the article. alteripse 02:29, 30 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Duncharris This is material is from multiple editors and was moved here from Just So Stories. If you wnat to major changes, please address the issues here in Discussion rather than just reverting them because of your POV.
 * Duncharris just reverted major material additions and references a second time and moved to delete the page without discussion.DLH 20:56, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

Here is the edited version with major section moved here from Just So Stories with multiple editors input, together with additional references citing scientific reviews using this terminology: '''Start proposed material DLH 21:03, 1 July 2006 (UTC) A just-so story is a term used in academic anthropology, biological sciences, and social sciences for a narrative explanation for a cultural practice or a biological trait or behavior of humans or animals which is unverifiable and unfalsifiable. The use of the term is an implicit criticism that reminds the hearer of the essentially fictional and unprovable nature of such an explanation.

Darwin's Whale story
Some consider evolutionary biology as presenting origin accounts similar to Kipling's Just-So Stories. e.g., in On the Origin of Species, Charles Darwin originally gave an example of a bear transforming into a whale sized creature.

In North America the black bear was seen by Hearne swimming for hours with widely open mouth, thus catching, like a whale, insects in the water. Even in so extreme a case as this, if the supply of insects were constant, and if better adapted competitors did not already exist in the country, I can see no difficulty in a race of bears being rendered, by natural selection, more and more aquatic in their structure and habits, with larger and larger mouths, till a creature was produced as monstrous as a whale.

Lamarckian Just-so stories
Because of some Just-so stories' extravagant nature, burlesquing the Lamarckian theory of heredity, the "inheritance of acquired traits", the phrase "just so story" has acquired the meaning, in evolutionary biology, of an unnecessarily elaborate and speculative evolutionary explanation that, while it may fit the facts, lacks any shred of empirical support.

Evolutionary biology critiques
Scientific reviews refer to Just-so stories for narratives failing scientific rigor. e.g., "Wade’s explanations commit various well-known errors, such as equating correlation with causation and extrapolating from individual traits to group characteristics….The book has many internal inconsistencies, and one can easily find contrary evidence or readily construct alternative ‘just so’ stories that invoke the same genetic scenario and the same kind of reasoning."

Evolutionary psychology
Many of the claims of evolutionary psychology that certain human traits were naturally selected for because of the environment humans lived in thousands of years ago are criticized as modern just-so stories. e.g., "Flanagan does give a just-so story about how consciousness could have evolved through natural selection, but just-so stories run counter to his very simple methodological suggestion --- use all the information one can get from any science that seems relevant to the task at hand; otherwise, wait until the data is available. Just-so stories aren't very scientific. Indeed, as long as we are allowed to spin arm-chair theories, why not consider consciousness to be a phenotypic free-rider, like the chin, such that no Darwinian story is going to explain its purpose, since it does not have one."

Rudyard Kippling's Just So Stories
This phrase is used in a reference to the Just So Stories of Rudyard Kipling, which are fictional and deliberately fanciful explanations for children of animal characteristics such as the spots of a leopard (e.g., How the Leopard Got His Spots).

2007-02-7 Automated pywikipediabot message
--CopyToWiktionaryBot 04:49, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Neutrality Check
I'm adding a POV-check header to this article. I don't disagree with anything currently written, but the lengthy section in defense of EvPsych needs to be balanced by some examples of the correct application of the "just-so story" criticism. Dfranke (talk) 03:01, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

This doesn't yet seem to have been resolved. The article is still heavily weighted in favour of defences of EP, with no substantive critique offered here. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 222.152.221.191 (talk) 14:15, 24 September 2020 (UTC)

Evolutionary psychology
This section is totally inappropriate and relies on a poor interpretation of ONE reference. There is an entire section accusing evolutionary psychology based on one review of a book that related to the possibility of explaining the development of consciousness through naturalistic processes? This is a pure example of a misuse of the term "just-so". The example explanation put forth was not a theory of how consciousness developed, but rather pointed out that plausible naturalistic explanations COULD be made. Following from that you have Holcombe's paper three years later specifically outlining how inference related to and informed data collection. This runs totally counter to the suggestion that such hypotheses were "just-so" stories. http://www.springerlink.com/content/h527008p37277m73/. Long story short, I am removing this section since the matter is dealt with later in the article anyway. Ninahexan (talk) 03:44, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
 * I've deleted it. To be added back it should be described as such by a logician, not by a POV partisan in the dispute itself. Tijfo098 (talk) 14:53, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

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What's the difference again?
Just-so story, pourquoi story, etiological myths, and origin stories all seem to be narratives (stories or myths) that explain some phenomenon. They are narratives, and are not intended as falsifiable hypotheses.

It is true that the different terms are used in different contexts for different rhetorical purposes. But Wikipedia is not a dictionary that describes words; it describes concepts. We don't have separate articles for "German people" and the various pejorative terms for them: "Hun", "Fritz", "Kraut", "Boche", etc. although each was used in a different context, with different nuances.

So I think we should re-open the question of merging them. --Macrakis (talk) 21:54, 11 May 2018 (UTC)

Gould source and new paper?
It's odd that no one can actually cite the supposed Gould's use of this term in 1978. At best, they refer to a New Yorker article (such as this article) which is an unfortunate dead end. Where did Gould actually do this?

Also, I wondered if this paper could be helpful on this question, and apparently not, but it still might be useful for this article. -Reagle (talk) 18:39, 17 January 2022 (UTC)


 * The entry in 978-3319196497 has a number of useful sources including:


 * Gould, S. J. (1978). Sociobiology: The art of story-telling. New Scientist, 80, 530–533.
 * Gould, S. J. (1980). Sociobiology and the theory of natural selection. In G. W. Barlow & J. Silverberg (Eds.), Sociobiology: Beyond nature/nurture? (pp. 257–269). Boulder: Westview Press.
 * Gould, S. J. (1996). The tallest tale. Natural History, 105(5), 18–23.
 * Gould, S.J. & Lewontin, R. C. (1979). The spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian paradigm: A critique of the adaptationist programme. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London BProceedings of the Royal Society of London B, 205, 581–598.

-Reagle (talk) 19:19, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Zero description of Gould's concept, disproportionate space given to rebuttal
This article gives the reader absolutely no idea what Gould meant when he used the term "just-so-story" to critique certain strands of evolutionary theory. We do not learn what types of evolutionary explanations Gould was criticizing with the concept, or the context in which he employed the term. There are no citations of Gould's work in this article. These issues were pointed out in 2010 and are still present. Then the article goes in to multiple lengthy paragraphs responding, rejecting and rebutting Gould's critique, all with relevant citations of the literature in question. This section would be too long even if the article contained an adequate exegesis of Gould's concept. Given that it does not, the article simply reads like a hit piece against Gould, with nothing approaching neutrality. I will attempt to improve this article over the coming weeks and to give an idea of the concept and the critiques levelled against it. Toadchavay (talk) 07:43, 8 September 2022 (UTC)