Rating: 
Summary: I almost skipped this one but...
Review: "Nature via Nurture"; the title sounds like a dead horse that doesn't need to be beaten any more. I decided to pick this one up because I love Ridley's work, and because it is read by the author. What a treat that is! With the author reading the book, you know that the nuances are correct, and that the abridgement isn't harming the message.The discussions in this book are dramatically and importantly different from other discussions of "Nature/Nurture", and I can hardly recommend it strongly enough. What is different is the degree of specificity that Ridley brings to the conversation. He demonstrates from a dozen different points of view HOW causality flows both ways, from the genes to the environment and back. He also pokes holes in logical fallacies one hears all the time - for example, the assertion that a feature is not genetic because the specific genes have not (and in some cases may not ever) been identified. A well-constructed twin study positively identifies heritability of traits; tracking that heritability back to a spot on a chromosome is useful and interesting but not necessary. There is also basic science here that the lay reader might not otherwise learn for years. For instance, until very recently it was thought that there was a one to one correlation between genes and their proteins. It was also unknown what, if any, purpose breaking genes apart into exons on the chromosome served. Now we have discovered that many - ninety five on one mouse gene - different versions of one exon can exist on the chromosome, allowing one gene to make many different versions of its protein. Different versions mediated by... environment, of course. Much of the information here is counter-intuitive. For instance, the more egalitarian a society is, the more the heritabilaty of traits becomes manifest. Potentially confusing, certainly mind-bending, and who better than Ridley to explain it? If you are interested in biology, read this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting in places ....
Review: but Ridley devotes too much space regurgitating tired, old, discredited dogmas on both sides of the nature-versus-nurture debate. I think his views are self-evident to many non-specialists, like myself, outside the sociobiolgical fishbowl.
As a physical scientist, I am often disturbed by the (in my opinion) misplaced empiricisms of behavioural/social scientists. For exapmle, in one part of the book, Ridley describes a "remarkable" experiment that found children with a certain high-active gene (MAOA) are "virtually immune" to the detrimental effects of mistreatment by their care-givers, and did not "get into trouble much", as compared to those with low-active versions of the gene. The implication is that this could become a tool of social policy. The thought of engineers building Jumbo Jets according to principles of gravitation, mechanics, and fluid dynamics that "ought to work a lot of the time" would be a disaster in the making - much like, in my opinion, social policy built along the thinking he outlines. Personally, I would be much more interested in low and high-ative MAOA children who flaunt the conventional conclusions of the study (of which I assume there are some, based on the language). Perhaps it is the exceptions that hold the key.
I'm not saying that physics/math/engineering is superior to the social/behavioural sciences. I think that it is important to know where the fuzzy edges of reductionist-empiricisms lie, and where to draw boundaries around them. I just think that physical scientists, by the nature of their fields, tend to have better tools for drawing and testing these boundaries. Without these boundaries, there seems to be a temptation to take conclusions too far, and be lead astray as a result.
Rating: 
Summary: Another excellent work from Ridley
Review: Following on from Genome (which I've reviewed), I find Matt Ridley very easy to read. Here he selects 12 'Hairy Scientists', some famous (eg Freud, Pavlov, Darwin), some not so famous, and weaves a wonderful story as he takes us through the highs and lows of their research & that of their contemporaries, bringing us right up to date with the Genome. With interesting anecdotes he brings each individual to life. The 7 moral conclusions at the end were particularly useful, especially No. 2 "being a good parent still matters" Given I'm now in the process of reading a similar book with some very poor illustrations, it was only afterwards looking back, that I see that I was entertained & educated without the need for any sketches or diagrams, and yet didn't feel cheated, deprived or confused.
Rating:
Summary: Read this or the Agile Gene -- not both
Review: Good book.
But same book.
Just different title.
Rating: 
Summary: Good general concepts ruined by bias in examples
Review: I am reviewing the Agile Gene, which is a reprint of Nature via Nurture (it is the identical book). The first part of the book gave me hope for some sort of middle ground where a popular scientist might acknowledge the complexity of how indirectly genes and biology affect human behavior (as opposed to the glib "gay gene discovered," "gene for aggression discovered" articles you see so often). He did this-- his book acknowledges, for example, that if you do a twin study of families in middle-class America, you have indirectly limited the influence of the environment (by excluding more diverse cultures) and therefore the influence of genes on variability in a trait will be larger. The problem is, he then proceeds to completely ignore this informative, nuanced view when tackling the controversial issues that get people interested in the Nature-Nurture debate in the first place (gender roles, homosexuality, and mental illness for example). Like so many science writers, he has little apparent knowledge of the humanities, social history, etc., and he holds his own preferred beliefs about human nature to a lower standard of proof than his opponents'. It is actually true that, as part of his defense of the idea of innate gender roles, he made reference to both the humorist Dave Barry *and* the popular work "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus." Don't get me wrong, I like Dave Barry, but he would be the first one to point out that he's not a scientific authority on cross-cultural gender studies! Ridley claims that [American or British] men's focus on "things" over "relationships" is genetic, but this idea, combined with his bit on homosexuality, merely shows that he needs to travel more. In America, women have much gushier friendships than men-they have "girlfriends" but we aren't supposed to have "boyfriends"-but this is not true in most places. In Latin America and many parts of Asia, Africa, and southern Europe, it is normal for straight men to kiss each other, hold hands, sometimes even have rituals of commitment to their friendships, etc. This also challenges the "gay gene" hypothesis: if big chunks of what Americans call "gay" are considered to be "straight" throughout the rest of the world, what would the gay gene code for? Even if it coded strictly for sex, in Mexico the top boy is often considered straight, and plenty of people everywhere experiment outside their "official" orientation. What all of this shows is that even if you have a gene for something, language and culture get added to it to create the final meaning. Ridley even acknowledges this ("genes enable, they don't restrict") but doesn't follow his own theory to its logical conclusion. In his section about the genetic basis of monogamy, he infers that because Margaret Mead failed to find a truly sexually libertine society in Samoa, they must not exist anywhere. (Mead was seeking a society without a taboo on premarital sex, which she could now find in any major American city.) He also assumes that all experiments with open marriage in Western societies had failed; if he had actually taken the time to look, he would know that people still practice open marriage today. Yes, some people have a lot of trouble with jealousy and give up on it, but others I have met find that open relationships are second nature to them. So, if Mr. Ridley had taken the time to talk to anyone from the cultures he claims cannot exist, he could have an interesting discussion about individual differences in sexual jealousy (genetic or environmental?). Instead, we simply learn that, in addition to not knowing where the social history section of the library is, Matt Ridley also does not know how to find subcultures on the Internet or check his local alternative paper for club meetings. In an otherwise-well-written chapter, he says that schizophrenia genes might have survived natural selection because in another combination they can lead to inventiveness. Well and good, but another reason these genes could be passed down is because not all cultures see "hearing voices" as a bad thing-some even see it as a form of religious inspiration! Even among those cultures that do see it as bad, most cultures do not leave their ill members out in the woods to die. But in Ridley-land, our ancestors were apparently all American Republicans in gated communities who go on rants about the danger of socialized medicine! I find it truly scary that this man has written a book called "Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature." He doesn't know the first thing about the diversity of human sexuality, friendship, or love. On the other hand, his book HAS awakened me to a new truth: maybe the problem with advocates of genetic sources of behavior isn't so much the fact that they believe that human diversity comes from genetic sources, as the fact that they base their theories on so little knowledge of what human diversity actually entails. Whether it's based on genes, environment, both, or neither, there's a whole lot more under the sun than is dreamt of in Matt Ridley's philosophy.
Rating:
Summary: Good general concepts ruined by bias in examples
Review: I am reviewing the Agile Gene, which is a reprint of Nature via Nurture (it is the identical book). The first part of the book gave me hope for some sort of middle ground where a popular scientist might acknowledge the complexity of how indirectly genes and biology affect human behavior (as opposed to the glib "gay gene discovered," "gene for aggression discovered" articles you see so often). He did this-- his book acknowledges, for example, that if you do a twin study of families in middle-class America, you have indirectly limited the influence of the environment (by excluding more diverse cultures) and therefore the influence of genes on variability in a trait will be larger. The problem is, he then proceeds to completely ignore this informative, nuanced view when tackling the controversial issues that get people interested in the Nature-Nurture debate in the first place (gender roles, homosexuality, and mental illness for example). Like so many science writers, he has little apparent knowledge of the humanities, social history, etc., and he holds his own preferred beliefs about human nature to a lower standard of proof than his opponents'. It is actually true that, as part of his defense of the idea of innate gender roles, he made reference to both the humorist Dave Barry *and* the popular work "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus." Don't get me wrong, I like Dave Barry, but he would be the first one to point out that he's not a scientific authority on cross-cultural gender studies! Ridley claims that [American or British] men's focus on "things" over "relationships" is genetic, but this idea, combined with his bit on homosexuality, merely shows that he needs to travel more. In America, women have much gushier friendships than men-they have "girlfriends" but we aren't supposed to have "boyfriends"-but this is not true in most places. In Latin America and many parts of Asia, Africa, and southern Europe, it is normal for straight men to kiss each other, hold hands, sometimes even have rituals of commitment to their friendships, etc. This also challenges the "gay gene" hypothesis: if big chunks of what Americans call "gay" are considered to be "straight" throughout the rest of the world, what would the gay gene code for? Even if it coded strictly for sex, in Mexico the top boy is often considered straight, and plenty of people everywhere experiment outside their "official" orientation. What all of this shows is that even if you have a gene for something, language and culture get added to it to create the final meaning. Ridley even acknowledges this ("genes enable, they don't restrict") but doesn't follow his own theory to its logical conclusion. In his section about the genetic basis of monogamy, he infers that because Margaret Mead failed to find a truly sexually libertine society in Samoa, they must not exist anywhere. (Mead was seeking a society without a taboo on premarital sex, which she could now find in any major American city.) He also assumes that all experiments with open marriage in Western societies had failed; if he had actually taken the time to look, he would know that people still practice open marriage today. Yes, some people have a lot of trouble with jealousy and give up on it, but others I have met find that open relationships are second nature to them. So, if Mr. Ridley had taken the time to talk to anyone from the cultures he claims cannot exist, he could have an interesting discussion about individual differences in sexual jealousy (genetic or environmental?). Instead, we simply learn that, in addition to not knowing where the social history section of the library is, Matt Ridley also does not know how to find subcultures on the Internet or check his local alternative paper for club meetings. In an otherwise-well-written chapter, he says that schizophrenia genes might have survived natural selection because in another combination they can lead to inventiveness. Well and good, but another reason these genes could be passed down is because not all cultures see "hearing voices" as a bad thing-some even see it as a form of religious inspiration! Even among those cultures that do see it as bad, most cultures do not leave their ill members out in the woods to die. But in Ridley-land, our ancestors were apparently all American Republicans in gated communities who go on rants about the danger of socialized medicine! I find it truly scary that this man has written a book called "Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature." He doesn't know the first thing about the diversity of human sexuality, friendship, or love. On the other hand, his book HAS awakened me to a new truth: maybe the problem with advocates of genetic sources of behavior isn't so much the fact that they believe that human diversity comes from genetic sources, as the fact that they base their theories on so little knowledge of what human diversity actually entails. Whether it's based on genes, environment, both, or neither, there's a whole lot more under the sun than is dreamt of in Matt Ridley's philosophy.
Rating:
Summary: Move beyond false dichotomies with this book
Review: Matt Ridley does exactly that with Nature via Nurture. He shows how "nature vs. nurture" simply is not a scientifically tenable idea. Genetic tendencies, such as imprinting, cannot be manifested without specific environmental influences; environmental influences cannot have an effect without genetic material on which to work.
This book is not, contrary to one other reviewer, hard to follow for anybody with a basic, basic education in heredity or genetics. And it's chock-full of information that will open one's eyes about the field.
Take, for example, the fact that humans have about 30,000 genes. Nurturists, and even more, mind-body dualists (particularly religious ones), seized on this as proof that human nature is sui generis and not physically determined by such a relative paucity of genes.
Ridley shows the falsehood of this on several fronts. First, on the mathematics, 30,000 genes, with recombinant variants, would produce well more variants than human population numbers. Second, he addresses this from a botany vs. zoology view, showing how plants have separate genes for manifestation of certain genetic information, rather than reduplication of genetic segments, as is the case with animals.
Third, Ridley tells how some genes have multiple exons, slightly variant, only one of which is selected during a particular protein translation after RNA transcription, and that each different exon can produce a different protein.
Testimony to the power of this book is shown on the dust jacket, which has blurbs from such strong naturists as Richard Dawkins and Steven Pinker.
I will agree with one reviewer below that it is amazing this book comes from the author of Genome, as just a couple of years ago I would have placed Ridley firmly in the camp of Dawkins and Pinker. Unfortunately, the book has no comments from Ridley as to how and why his views evolved.
Rating:
Summary: If ever a wiz, a wiz there was, if ever a wiz there was
Review: Matt Ridley has written a very good book on the origins of human behavior. It's worth reading two or three times just to keep all the information straight, unless you're one who just downloads what you read into your file cabinet of a mind. Well,... not I, this was difficult. In that other reveiwers here have gone into an adequate description of the book I'd like to assume a different tack. Why did Ridley follow up "Genome" with "Nature via Nurture?" It seems that he's gone to great lengths to establish a postulate that genes are enabling forces that engage nature in some sort of a closed feed-back loop whereby they're switched on and off by yet other genes in response to the influences of outside events. This is fascinating and makes perfect sense. Yet we also learn of genes that govern our ability to pair-bond/ to form loving relationships, genes for agression vs timidity, genes for criminal behavior, genes for fear and courage, for intensity vs calmness, and a myriad of other behavioral traits, abilities and characteristics. Can these traits be changed by outside events? We find that restraint is the lynchpin of culture, and it's that which separates us from the apes. We also learn that specialization and division of labor are unique to humans relative to animals who have to do everything for themselves. This all has a plausible ring to it does it not? Again and again we're told of all the different ways that genes/nature are coupled with nurture/environment until we become intellectually dizzy with all the permutations of information derived from history, science and societal differences. We learn of the countless ways genes can and do interact. It's a full bucket of information! Then we get to the twin studies and the hereitability of traits and behavioral characteristics. This is fascinating. Identical twins have a far greater incidence of hereitible traits than fraternal twins. And, even if they've been separated at birth they show remarkable similarities in every way when they're reintroduced 35 years later, even when brought up in entirely different surroundings. Somehow the environmental side of the equation failed to switch those genes on and off in a way that would have radically changed their behavior in the interim. However, it's not politically correct to say this. After all, political correctness has always been the province of those on the Left who have made the claim that the perfect socialist man will result if inflenced with the proper environmental stimuli, from birth or otherwise. Ridley points out that this form of societal organization has resulted in gulags and mass murder, but that logic hasn't seemed to have affected the collective worldveiws of those who have what the author Thomas Sowell refers to as "the vision of the annointed." In any event, Ridley brings all of these competing theories into play while nudging his premise toward the middle of the political road. He does it well! The book "Taboo", by a track and field guy whose name escapes me, goes into great length on the dominance that some racial groups have in certain sports and in certain track and field events. Thomas Sowell has written repeatedly about how different nationalities have become adept at different tasks or trades in different areas of the world. And, J.Philip Rushton has written extensively on this subject in his book, "race, evolution and behavior." Whether one agrees with these gentlemen or not their work deserves discussion. While Ridley eschews this radioactive info he does go into the work of Jane Goodall with the Chimps in Gombi. I believe that Ridley is acutely aware of this point of view, but that he's doesn't want to be pegged as a radical in favor of genetic determinism (and I don't believe that he is a radical). However, he knows that when one goes too far in favor of "nurture" as a deciding behavioral factor that one can be caricatured and more easily dismissed by the political enemies of ones position. I'm hopeful that research will soon tell us what it is that makes it so common for humans to blind themselves from accepting new information into their old theories of how the world works; to tell us, how a man might change his belief system and subsequently his behavior patterns. When this feedback loop is established mankind will take a quantum leap forward. Ridley is a magnificent narrator in this endeavor and I look forward to his continuing tale with eager anticipation. The excitement is evident as new information flows into this on-going debate, and I agree with Ridley as he says, "it's the most profound intellectual moment in the history of mankind", truly a magic time to be alive!
Rating:
Summary: A good read
Review: Ridley has a unique talent for exposing technical subjects in a consise and entertaining manner, keeping an eye for detail. I highly recommend this book. It is not as fascinating as Ridley's previous book "Genome" but still a very good read. The book is riddled with scientific discoveries you would like to share with your friends. Written as a true best seller it keeps the pace and does not suffer from the verbosity of other popular science books (e.g., Pinker). On the downside, it will appear less "scientific" than other pop. science books.
Rating: 
Summary: Science, or lecture on morality?
Review: Ridley laced his summaries of research with his personal values, more specifically fidelity, monogamy, anti-homosexuality, and the existence of moral absolutes. However, despite his unfounded and unsubstantiated claims, for which he uses circular reasoning and poor justification, the research summaries are interesting.
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