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Following his highly praised and bestselling
book Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters,
Matt Ridley has written a brilliant and profound book about
the roots of human behavior. Nature vs. Nurture explores
the complex and endlessly intriguing question of what makes
us who we are.
In February 2001 it was announced that the
human genome contains not 100,000 genes, as originally postulated,
but only 30,000. This startling revision led some scientists
to conclude that there are simply not enough human genes
to account for all the different ways people behave: we
must be made by nurture, not nature. Yet again biology was
to be stretched on the Procrustean bed of the nature-nurture
debate. Matt Ridley argues that the emerging truth is far
more interesting than this myth. Nurture depends on genes,
too, and genes need nurture. Genes not only predetermine
the broad structure of the brain, they also absorb formative
experiences, react to social cues, and even run memory.
They are consequences as well as causes of the will.
Published fifty years after the discovery
of the double helix of DNA, Nature vs. Nurture chronicles
a revolution in our understanding of genes. Ridley recounts
the hundred years' war between the partisans of nature and
nurture to explain how this paradoxical creature, the human
being, can be simultaneously free-willed and motivated by
instinct and culture. Nature vs. Nurture is an enthralling,
up-to-the-minute account of how genes build brains to absorb
experience.
Matt Ridley's books have been shortlisted
for six literary awards. He has been a scientist, a journalist,
and a national newspaper columnist, and is currently chairman
of the International Centre for Life, in Newcastle, England.
He is also a visiting professor at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
in New York.
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