Neither Nature Nor Nurture

Nick Gillespie | September 30, 2003

From an interesting review of Matt Ridley's Nature Via Nurture in the Prospect:

There are several reasons for taking a more radical step beyond nature/nurture. The first is that the two terms are so ill-defined. For Galton, �nature� was the contribution of heredity to our personality, intelligence, achievements and a variety of physical and mental characteristics. A century or so later, heredity has boiled down to the roles of genes. But this has not resulted in clarification. Above the level of molecular biology, the notion of a �gene� has become increasingly complex. The chapter in which Ridley addresses the ambiguities of this slippery word is an expository tour de force. He considers seven possible meanings of gene as used in different contexts: a unit of heredity; an interchangeable part of evolution; a recipe for a metabolic product; a disease averter or health giver; a development switch; a unit of selection; and a unit of instinct. These different ways of seeing a gene are neither mutually exclusive nor precisely mappable on to one another. There is another problem: genes have been invoked not only to account for the differences between human beings but also (by sociobiologists and evolutionary psychologists) to explain human nature in general. This has created new muddles between genetic variation as the determinant of individual personality and the human genome as a constraint on human nature in general. Those who believe that there are genes that make human males violent are often unclear whether such genes are part of a common male inheritance designed to assist life in the wild or are present in only a subset of very bloodthirsty males.

The reviewer, Raymond Tallis, takes an unfair swipe at Steven Pinker, who has similarly complicated the nature/nurture split. Reason interviewed Pinker last year; the text is online here.

[Link via Arts & Letters Daily]

Comments

Shady O'Grady|9.30.03 @ 4:25AM|#

I didn't read the book, but isn't one's genetic sequence, the specific sequence of nucleotides, specific enough to exclusively imply "nature". "Nuture" could then be everything else?

|9.30.03 @ 4:46AM|#

Shady, how much a particular gene produces its associated protein, or even what form of that protein, can be affected by it's environment. This can be caused by methylation or phosphorylation of those specific nucleotides just to mention a couple ways.

Obvious|9.30.03 @ 5:08AM|#

Who is Francis Galton?

|9.30.03 @ 5:50AM|#

Sir Francis Galton F.R.S. 1822-1911

Victorian polymath: geographer, meteorologist, tropical explorer, founder of differential psychology, inventor of fingerprint identification, pioneer of statistical correlation and regression, convinced hereditarian, eugenicist, proto-geneticist, half-cousin of Charles Darwin and best-selling author.

Jean Bart|9.30.03 @ 5:57AM|#

Isn't any criticism of someone that the Hit n' Run editors like an "unfair swipe?" I seem to get that feeling a lot anyway.

Justin Slotman|9.30.03 @ 7:44AM|#

Anybody read Tallis' book? The one he mentions--"The Hand."

|9.30.03 @ 9:45AM|#

In support of Pinker, the modestly titled "How the Mind Works" is a fantastic work.

Don't expect to do the whole thing at a sitting though.

|9.30.03 @ 10:08AM|#

Jean Bart,

The swipe at Pinker is unfair for two reasons:

1) Pinker's argument is that the idea that behavior is analyzable without looking at the construction and programming inherent in the center of behavior is based on ages old mythology. The insult taken by Tallis is overstated.

2) Pinker is explicit about the mitigating factors of environment, how he feels they play in behavior, and most importantly their ethical implications, so it is completely unfair to present his argument as "we are our genes and nothing more."