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Title: Nature Via Nurture : Genes, Experience, and What Makes Us Human by Matt Ridley ISBN: 0-06-000678-1 Publisher: HarperCollins Pub. Date: 29 April, 2003 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $25.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.11 (18 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: I almost skipped this one but...
Comment: "Nature via Nurture"; the title sounds like a dead horse that doesn't need to be beaten any more. I decided to pick this one up because I love Ridley's work, and because it is read by the author. What a treat that is! With the author reading the book, you know that the nuances are correct, and that the abridgement isn't harming the message.
The discussions in this book are dramatically and importantly different from other discussions of "Nature/Nurture", and I can hardly recommend it strongly enough. What is different is the degree of specificity that Ridley brings to the conversation. He demonstrates from a dozen different points of view HOW causality flows both ways, from the genes to the environment and back. He also pokes holes in logical fallacies one hears all the time - for example, the assertion that a feature is not genetic because the specific genes have not (and in some cases may not ever) been identified. A well-constructed twin study positively identifies heritability of traits; tracking that heritability back to a spot on a chromosome is useful and interesting but not necessary.
There is also basic science here that the lay reader might not otherwise learn for years. For instance, until very recently it was thought that there was a one to one correlation between genes and their proteins. It was also unknown what, if any, purpose breaking genes apart into exons on the chromosome served. Now we have discovered that many - ninety five on one mouse gene - different versions of one exon can exist on the chromosome, allowing one gene to make many different versions of its protein. Different versions mediated by... environment, of course.
Much of the information here is counter-intuitive. For instance, the more egalitarian a society is, the more the heritabilaty of traits becomes manifest. Potentially confusing, certainly mind-bending, and who better than Ridley to explain it?
If you are interested in biology, read this book.
Rating: 5
Summary: Move beyond false dichotomies with this book
Comment: Matt Ridley does exactly that with Nature via Nurture. He shows how "nature vs. nurture" simply is not a scientifically tenable idea. Genetic tendencies, such as imprinting, cannot be manifested without specific environmental influences; environmental influences cannot have an effect without genetic material on which to work.
This book is not, contrary to one other reviewer, hard to follow for anybody with a basic, basic education in heredity or genetics. And it's chock-full of information that will open one's eyes about the field.
Take, for example, the fact that humans have about 30,000 genes. Nurturists, and even more, mind-body dualists (particularly religious ones), seized on this as proof that human nature is sui generis and not physically determined by such a relative paucity of genes.
Ridley shows the falsehood of this on several fronts. First, on the mathematics, 30,000 genes, with recombinant variants, would produce well more variants than human population numbers.
Second, he addresses this from a botany vs. zoology view, showing how plants have separate genes for manifestation of certain genetic information, rather than reduplication of genetic segments, as is the case with animals.
Third, Ridley tells how some genes have multiple exons, slightly variant, only one of which is selected during a particular protein translation after RNA transcription, and that each different exon can produce a different protein.
Testimony to the power of this book is shown on the dust jacket, which has blurbs from such strong naturists as Richard Dawkins and Steven Pinker.
I will agree with one reviewer below that it is amazing this book comes from the author of Genome, as just a couple of years ago I would have placed Ridley firmly in the camp of Dawkins and Pinker. Unfortunately, the book has no comments from Ridley as to how and why his views evolved.
Rating: 2
Summary: C'mon now...
Comment: You can be reasonably sure that any "scientist" who readily endorses Lomborg's The Skeptical Environmentalist is inappropriately abusing his position to promote his political agenda.
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Title: Genome by Matt Ridley ISBN: 0060932902 Publisher: HarperCollins Pub. Date: 03 October, 2000 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature by Matt Ridley ISBN: 0140245480 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: June, 1995 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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Title: The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature by Steven Pinker ISBN: 0670031518 Publisher: Viking Press Pub. Date: 26 September, 2002 List Price(USD): $27.95 |
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Title: The Origins of Virtue: Human Instincts and the Evolution of Cooperation by Matt Ridley ISBN: 0140264450 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: April, 1998 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: A Devil's Chaplain : Reflections on Hope, Lies, Science, and Love by Richard Dawkins ISBN: 0618335404 Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Co Pub. Date: 29 September, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.00 |
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