NATURE VIA NURTURE:
Genes, experience and what makes us human
By Matt Ridley. Fourth Estate, HarperCollins
ISBN 1 84115 745 7
Matt Ridley is a gifted science writer who specialises in exploring evolutionary themes. The trigger for 'Nature via Nurture' was the media attention given to the Human Genome Project in 2000. Instead of the expected 100,000 genes, the researchers could only identify about 30,000. This leaves humans undistinguished in terms of our genetic library - we have parity with the mouse, less genes than a mustard weed and much less than a rice plant. Questions are being asked about what really makes us human.
Can it be our genes? Or, is our environment the secret of human behaviour? This 'Nature versus Nurture' approach to these questions goes back to Francis Galton, who coined the phrase in 1874. Now, with only a third of the genes we were thought to have (and possibly only 500 genes) distinguishing us from chimpanzees, people have concluded that the environment must be determinative in making us essentially human.
