Matt Ridley

Matt Ridley doesn't disappoint. Similar to Genome: the Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters or The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature, both highly engrossing reads where he managed to be both accessible yet detailed enough to please lay readers willing to delve deeper than your usual pop science book, here's another masterpiece set to become a classic. Please note the telling title -it's not about nature vs nurture, but a view which seems to flip our understanding of human show more nature completely upside-down. Well, of course, we all know that what shapes our behaviours and capabilities are both a matter of genes and environment... or do we? The traps of determinism (be it biological or environmental) seem to loom large indeed, and reading around in the mass medias or the pop culture it still seem to be either/ or. Is the debate between the geneticists against the empiricists really over?

'Nature via Nurture' is wide encompassing, and as such it can be intimidating. As much as I love Matt Ridley, it's undeniable that he here gives his readers a lot to chew upon! It will be enthralling, engrossing, and fascinating as usual, but it will also requires some more efforts too. In fact, he structured his book by building a whole argument starting around an imaginary picture featuring crucial scientist and their theories -Darwin, Galton, James, Kraepelin, Freud, Boas, Durkheim, Piaget, Lorenz, De Vries, Pavlov, and Watson. Needless to say, from biology to anthropology and psychology and psychiatry and even linguistics, here's a multi-tentacles monster! Nevertheless, this is probably the best window offered into the fascinating interaction between genes and environment, a great lecture about the never ending feedbacks shaping us all as unique individuals.

Absolutely brilliant. show less

I plucked this book off a shelf when I was packing to move -- it had been nearly invisible in a corner. When or why I bought it, I cannot recall. I was just idly curious, but learned more than I expected. The book was inspired by the Human Genome Project, but is not about it. It is instead a themed approach to describing how genes work and why we should care. I'm rather behind the times, woefully so because this book was written a decade ago and surely much more is known now. Things have show more gone far beyond Mendel and his peas, dominant and recessive, the stuff of high school biology. Genes are not just active during development, they keep producing. And there are far too many genes, with far too many entanglements, for coherent presentation to the non-specialist. The themed approach is to focus on one gene on each of the 23 human chromosome pairs, as it influences, for example, disease or memory or aging. Along the way the discussion wends through human evolution, the history of genetics, modern medical issues such as gene screening and gene therapy, philosophical issues such as nature vs nurture. Biological processes are explained in their essence without every tedious chemical step. I wished for diagrams, but then this is my complaint about nearly every book I read. There is an occasional political insertion (the author has a PhD in zoology but was a journalist for The Economist for many years), but not so much as to be irritating. I enjoyed this book for its combination of facts and philosophy and the range in between, will make a point of reading other books by the same author.

(read 11 Apr 2009) show less

This book reminded me a lot of What Technology Wants by Kevin Kelly. In fact, Ridley mentions Kelly’s book a few times. They have in common a way of looking at the world that invokes an unfolding with innumerable gradual adjustments. If we push far enough, there are no light bulb moments. Each idea builds on those that came before and little by little each aspect of this universe evolves.

Ridley often has a libertarian bent, claiming that a hands-off, laissez faire approach is more show more evolutionary. He feels that if humans interfere too much with economics and government, it alters what would have come about naturally. To me this logic is flawed because it goes against what his own position is advocating. The human systems of economy and government have also come about through evolution so how can anything be wrong; it just is what it is.

I did enjoy reading his perspective, and I can already see how I have begun incorporating his ideas into my daily life. Though I think he protests too much on the aspects of humanity that seem contradictory, I think his overall logic is sound on most aspects. To me, a bit by bit adjustment to the universe, to biology, and to ideas makes a great deal of sense. show less

This book leaves me puzzled. It offers a dazzling overview of human history drenched in an optimistic "progression"-approach. Especially the emphasis on the evergrowing and intertwined role of exchange, specialisation and innovation is an eye-opener. For me, he is also rather convincing in his condemnation of the always returning doomthinking, especially on the climate-change issue.
But, on the other hand, this is also a radical, ultra-liberal pamphlet. Ridley glorifies in one-sided show more freemarket retoric, scorches governments and bureaucracies as catastrofical instruments, and he is extremely apologetic about the record of corporations (although he keeps silent about his own role in the Northern Rock-debacle).
So, I'm puzzled: this book is breathtaking ("thoughtprovoking") and horrible at the same time. It doesn't leave you indifferent, for sure. Let me conclude: this is a must-read! show less