Books and
Cooks West
March 2004
Nature Via Nurture by Matt Ridley
Nature Via Nurture: Genes, Experience, and What Makes Us Human
by Matt Ridley
Dawn and Jared's place
Saturday, March 6 at 5:30 PM
Homemade pizza, salad, sausage-green bean casserole,
red wine, Boston Cream Pie
Our rating: 4 cups of tea!
Amazon.com
In the follow-up to his bestseller, Genome, Matt Ridley takes on
a centuries-old question: is it nature or nurture that makes us who we
are? Ridley asserts that the question itself is a "false dichotomy."
Using copious examples from human and animal behavior, he presents the
notion that our environment affects the way our genes express
themselves.
Ridley writes that the switches controlling our 30,000 or so
genes not only form the structures of our brains but do so in such a
way as to cue off the outside environment in a tidy feedback loop of
body and behavior. In fact, it seems clear that we have genetic
"thermostats" that are turned up and down by environmental factors. He
challenges both scientific and folk concepts, from assumptions of
what's malleable in a person to sociobiological theories based solely
on the "selfish gene."
Ridley's proof is in the pudding for such touchy subjects as
monogamy, aggression, and parenting, which we now understand have some
genetic controls. Nevertheless, "the more we understand both our genes
and our instincts, the less inevitable they seem." A consummate
popularizer of science, Ridley once again provides a perfect mix of
history, genetics, and sociology for readers hungry to understand the
implications of the human genome sequence. --Therese Littleton
