Description:
William Wright takes on the question of nature versus nurture, examining the roles heredity and environment play in determining not only what we look like, but why some of us like coffee rather than tea or prefer cats to dogs. Wright's position is clearly in favor of genetic control of our predispositions, based on compelling evidence from various research such as the famous University of Minnesota studies of identical twins raised separately and from newer work such as that outlined in Dean Hamer's Living with Our Genes. Wright states emphatically, "The nature-nurture war is over." But he carefully avoids much of the outcry that met biologist E.O. Wilson's introduction of the principles of sociobiology by stating up front that genes aren't everything: "None of the data turned up by behavioral geneticists shows genes to be tyrannical commands, but rather nudges, sometimes strong, but more often weak." Wright makes a strong case for genetic determinism, while carefully distancing himself from the socio-political ramifications of saying people are "born that way." He does this by showing how decades of research pointing toward genes as determiners of body and mind has been misinterpreted by groups or individuals intent on achieving their nonscientific goals. --Therese Littleton
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