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: 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: Mind Modulates Gene Expression
Review: According to Matt Ridley we are approaching a profound but little understood revolution in our understanding of the nature-nuture controversy. We are making new discoveries about how humans can learn to turn their genes on and off to create a better brain and health throughout their lifetime. We are not puppets dancing to the tune of our genes as many popular but simple-minded theories would maintain. The opposite is the true situation. Genes active partners within every cell of our brain and body that respond in an adaptive manner to cues from our environment. Matt Ridley came to this new understanding by interviewing many of the researchers that made the original scientific discoveries about how genes and environment interact. I can do no better than quote his own words to express his new vision.
"The first and most general moral is that genes are enablers, not constrainers. They create new possibilities for the organism; they do not reduce its options. Oxytocin receptor genes allow pair bonding; without them the prairie vole would not have the option of forming a pair bond [finding a mate]. CREB genes allow memory; without these genes, it would be impossible to learn and recall. BDNF allows the calibration of binocular vision through experience; without it you could not so easily judge depth and see the world as three-dimensional. FOXP2 mysteriously allows human beings to acquire the language of their people; without it, you cannot learn to speak. And so on. These new possibilities are open to experience, not scripted in advance. Gene no more constrain human nature than the extra programs constrain a computer. A computer with Word, PowerPoint, Acrobat, Internet Explorer, Photoshop, and the like not only can do more that a computer without these programs but can also get more from the outside world. It can open more files, find more Websites, and accept more e-mail. . . . Genes, unlike gods, are conditional. They are exquisitely good at simple if-then logic: if in a certain environment, then develop in a certain way. . . I suspect that science has so far greatly underestimated the number of gene sets which act in this way - conditioning their output to external conditions. (p. 250). . . Genes themselves are implacable little determinists, churning out utterly predictable messages. But because of the way their promoters switch on and off in response to external instruction, genes are very far from being fixed in their actions. Instead, they are devices for extracting information from the environment. Every minute, every second, the pattern of genes being expressed in your brain changes, often in direct or indirect response to events outside the body. Genes are the mechanisms of experience." (p. 248, italics added)
Ridley reviews at least 7 major theories of genes and human nature in a manner that is accessible to the general reader as well as befuddled professionals and scientists. His book is an antidote to all who acknowledge their despair at the the corrosive effects of the currently popular but mindless determinism in genetics and the neurosciences in general in their reductionistic efforts to understand mind, behavior, and free will. Ridley provides new conceptual tools for creating a scientifically enriched rather than impoverished understanding of the human condition.
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: Nature via Nurture - I loved this book
Review: I wasn't going to read this book becuase the reviews didn't sound good enough but someone I trust recommended it, and I loved it. It is well-written and assumes that the reader is intelligent and perceptive. The subject matter is very interesting but what made this book a gem was the quality of the writing. The author keeps your attention and makes you think. Now my problem is that nothing else seems good enough.
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.
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