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Loading... The Agile Gene: How Nature Turns on Nurtureby Matt Ridley
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. This book is superbly written and makes a very turgid subject interesting and understandable. Ridley shows that those who attribute all human behaviour either to nature (genetics) or nurture (environment) are both determinist and both wrong. Genes respond to the environment in fascinating and complex ways which he describes with well chosen experiments described in a very entertaining narrative. (  )1   maunder | May 11, 2008 |  Engaging but dense with facts. ( ) hsienlei | Aug 6, 2007 | TBR  miketroll | Mar 15, 2007 | TBR miketroll | Feb 23, 2007 | It is NOT another book about nature vs. nurture debate. This the latest research into the interdependence of genes and environment and experience. Very, very interesting stuff, but it took me a lot of time to finish. There are too many digressions in each chapter, too many anecdotes, and too many illustrations to each point. It’s very clever and shows a lot of erudition (from Henry James to nematodes in one paragraph), but, in the end, the relevant information is all over the place and it is hard to follow what the actual thesis is. Some chapters are better than others, but I had to re-read pages at a time to make sure I knew what the main point was. ( )3 Niecierpek | Dec 1, 2006 |  no reviews | add a review
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Nature via Nurture: Genes, Experience, & What Makes Us Human |
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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
(retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:05 -0400)
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