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Posted on 06/02/2003 1:46:54 PM PDT by Heartlander
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Blinded by Science |
| Nature via Nurture: Genes, Experience, & What Makes Us Human, by Matt Ridley HarperCollins, 336 pp., $25.95) This is a very strange book, and I am not quite sure what the author is attempting to achieve. At the very least it appears that he wants to shore up genetic determinism as the key factor in understanding human nature and individual behavior. Genetic determinism is rational materialism's substitute for the religious notion of predestination; taking the place of God as puppet master are the genes, whose actions and interactions control who we are, what we think, and how we act. This reductionist view received a body blow recently when the mappers of the human genome found that we have only about 30,000 genes. Because of their understanding of human complexity, the scientists were expecting at least 100,000 -- and that means there are probably too few genes for strict genetic determinism to be true. Ridley, a science writer and former U.S. editor of The Economist, tries to ride to the rescue. In doing so, he adds a twist that he hopes will overcome our apparent genetic paucity: Yes, he says, our genes decide who we are, what we do and think, and even with whom we fall in love. But, he posits, our molecular masters are not rigidly preset when we are born. Rather, they change continually in reaction to our biological and emotional experiences. Hence, 30,000 are more than enough for a soft genetic determinism to be true -- which means that the battle between those who believe we are the product of our biology (nature) versus those who believe we are the result of our environment (nurture) can now end in a truce in which both sides win. We are indeed controlled by our genes, but they in turn are influenced by our experiences. Ridley says that the mapping of the genome "has indeed changed everything, not by closing the argument or winning the [nature versus nurture] battle for one side or the other, but by enriching it from both ends till they meet in the middle." To Ridley, the core of our true selves isn't soul, mind, or even body in the macro sense; we are, in essence, merely the expression of our genes at any given moment. If this is true, then my perception of Nature via Nurture as so much nonsense was the only reaction I could have had, given my original genetic programming, as later modified by my every experience and emotion from my conception, through the womb, childhood, high school, college, practicing law, the death of my father, indeed up to and including the reading of this book. If that is so – if I was forced by my gene expression of the moment to perceive this book as I have -- what have we really learned that can be of any benefit to humankind? We are all slaves to chemistry and there is no escape. Even aside from such broader issues, Ridley does not make a persuasive case. Maybe it is my legal training, but I found his evidence very thin. He doesn't present proofs so much as resort to wild leaps of logic predicated on questionably relevant social science and facile analogies based on a few animal studies. These are simply not strong enough to be the sturdy weight-supporting pillars that his thesis requires to be credible. Let's look at just one example. He cites studies of monogamous prairie voles to suggest that humans only think they fall in love, when, in reality, what we call love is merely the expression of genes resulting in the release of the chemicals oxytocin and vasopressin. Claiming that he is not going to "start extrapolating anthropomorphically from pair-bonding in voles to love in people," he proceeds to do just that. Citing the vole studies and Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream -- in which a love potion makes Titania fall in love with a man with a donkey's head – Ridley writes: Who would now wager against me that I could not do something like this to a modern Titania? Admittedly, a drop on the eyelids would not suffice. I would have to give her a general anesthetic while I cannulated her medial amygdala and injected oxytocin into it. I doubt even then that I could make her love a donkey. But I might stand a fair chance of making her feel attracted to the first man she sees upon waking. Would you bet against me? But shouldn't it take far more than measuring the physical effects of oxytocin on prairie voles to prove that something as complex, maddening, unpredictable, and wonderfully and uniquely human as romantic love can, in reality, be reduced to the mere expression of genes leading to chemical secretions? Not, apparently, to Ridley. "Blindly, automatically, and untaught, we bond with whoever is standing nearest when oxytocin receptors in the medial amygdala get tingled." Gee, if he'd known that, Bill Clinton could have purchased fewer copies of Leaves of Grass. The most fascinating thing about this book is that Ridley inadvertently makes a splendid argument for intelligent design. At this point, I am sure Ridley's "I am utterly appalled" genes are expressing wildly. He is, after all, a scientific materialist in good standing. Yet, throughout the book, in order to make his arguments understandable, he resorts explicitly to the imagery of the guiding hand. He even gives it a name: the "Genome Organizing Device," or "G.O.D." Ridley claims that the G.O.D is "a skillful chef, whose job is to build a souffle," consisting of the various parts of us and all other life on the planet. Note the language of intentionality in his description of the evolution of the human brain: To build a brain with instinctive abilities, the Genome Organizing Device lays down separate circuits with suitable internal patterns that allow them to carry out suitable computations, then links them with appropriate inputs from the senses. . . . In the case of the human mind, almost all such instinctive modules are designed to be modified by experience. Some adapt continuously throughout life, some change rapidly with experience then set like cement. A few just develop to their own timetable. But according to my lay understanding, this violates the theory and philosophy of evolution. The hypothesis of natural selection holds that species origination and change are promoted by genetic mutations. Those mutations that change the organism to make it more likely than its unchanged peers to survive long enough to reproduce are likely to be passed down the generations. Eventually, these genetic alterations spread among the entire species and become universal within its genome. It is through this dynamic evolutionary process of modification, the theory holds, that life fills all available niches in nature. It is also the process, although the details are not known, by which the primates now known as homo sapiens became conscious. The philosophy of Darwinism posits that this evolutionary process is aimless, unintentional, purposeless, and without rhyme or reason. This means it has no biological goal: It just is. Hence, G.O.D. would not want to "build a brain," develop nature via nurture in species, or do any other thing. Yet, throughout the book, Ridley seems able only to describe what he thinks is going on using the language of intention. Could this be because Ridley's theories would require interactions that are so complex and unlikely that they would seem laughable if described as having come together haphazardly, by mere chance? So what are we to learn from his insights? In terms of how we live our lives, not much beyond what common sense already tells us: Parents matter and should engage with their children; human teenagers enjoy doing what they are good at, and dislike doing what they are bad at; and so on. That much is harmless; but Ridley's deeper point is subversive of human freedom and individual accountability. He denies the existence of free will: Our actions are not causes but effects, "prespecified by, and run by, genes." Indeed, he claims unequivocally, "There is no 'me' inside my brain, there is only an ever-changing set of brain states, a distillation of history, emotion, instinct, experience, and the influence of other people -- not to mention chance." Ridley asserts this as if it would be a good thing to learn that the complexity and richness of human experience could accurately be reduced to merely the acts of so many slaves obeying the lash of chemical overseers acting under the direction of our experience-influenced gene owners. "Nature versus nurture is dead," Ridley concludes triumphantly. "Long live nature via nurture." Sorry. Maybe it's my genes, but I just don't buy it. |
Which only goes to show what a total ingrate he really was. The word "matricide" comes to mind.
As far as liberal economics is concerned, I think the entire enterprise of rational economics was completely ruined by Lord Keynes. His great contribution to humanity seems to consist in his finding of the magic rationalization for putting the levers of economic power into the hands of politicians.
As far as "economic sanity" goes, I much prefer Joseph Schumpeter, Keynes' contemporary. Schumpeter wrote a most prescient book, dated to circa 1926: Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy. In this work he predicted that capitalism would eventually die, victim of its own brilliant achievement, its very success. But it was mostly passed over, by specialist and general readers alike, in favor of Keynes' dreams of legitimating political utility and ambition, obtainable only by seizing the fruits of private production (by "legal" means; e.g., the income tax), and by making the American populace more "progressive" in its "thinking" so that such political dreams could be fulfilled.
Schumpeter's vision seems to have largely come true; most likely, due to the tender mercies and ministrations of "the Keynesian followers" over the decades.
And therein lies an irony....
I don't think he really buys it. He just enjoys calling Hitler a Christian or creationist.
Darwin likely understood the political implications since he was influcenced by Malthus:
It'll have to be tomorrow, General. It's late, I'm sleepy, I'm going to bed now. 'Til then, good night and pleasant dreams! Thank you for writing.
Didn't CS Lewis say something to that effect as well? If anyone knew mythology, Lewis did.
Do I have to give you an EXACT number????
What I believe is my opinion based on my beliefs....just like what the evolutionists say is their opinion based on their beliefs....I'd certainly say tens of thousands, maybe hundreds, but not millions, IMHO
They are very good, you should check them out! ;^)
For what says Quinapalus -- "Better a witty fool than a foolish wit."
~ William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Nebraska Man
Piltdown Man
Haekel's embryos
The evolution of the horse
Peppered moths
Ota Benga
monera
Liaon Province Archaeoraptor
Sawed-pelvis Lucy
Peking Man
Java Man
Etc. Etc.
Eisegesis. From what authority to you draw your definition?
I own them. Unfortunately, they are on video tape.
It justifies force, conflict, struggle as proper ways for man to ensure his survival, rather than negotiation and rational compromise. Man is never let free of his supposed status as a wild beast, who must "kill or be killed." In fact, neither "Darwinian" materialism or socialism has any room or rationale for human freedom at all.
We recall that this earth became a domain of the one referred to by means of the King of Tyre in Ezekiel 28, . Some tend to think that with a close observer's mastery of the systems and substances of creation, as the one intended to be the living signature and gaurdian of it, he was able to pervert it. Then, God created a guarded enviornment as a new world* in its formative stages, for His planned new Lords of Earth (apparently amidst such perversities as animals that had developed their livelihoods by eating other animals). Some opine that the mandate to be a servant to God's Intended, His appointed Lords of Earth (mankind, "the sons of God") may have been the last straw with Lucifer in his regards of God.
Interesting conjecturings. I'd be interested in your reflections about such matters, as the Lord and you may allow.
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* This would beg an interpretation of "world" in Scripture (possibly including the flood passage) as referring specifically to the geography of man's inhabitation.
Being you know that much, you should realize that complex and extended interactions cannot be changed favorably in a stochastic manner.
I think that while it may be true that God could have chosen to have species evolve, it still would not be evolution. If God had chosen to have species change and turn themselves into something else, a sort of 'unfolding', then it would have been by design, not by chance. It is the chanciness and randomness as well as the claim by evolution that it is the environment that changes species that is anti-Christian.
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