Understanding the Nature‒Nurture Debate

Understanding Life

by Eric Turkheimer

There are arguably few areas of science more fiercely contested than the question of what makes us who we are. Are we products of our environments or our genes? Is nature the governing force behind our behaviour or is it nurture? While it is now widely agreed that it is a mixture of both, discussions continue as to which is the dominant influence. This unique volume presents a clear explanation of heritability, the ongoing nature versus nurture debate and the evidence that is currently available. Starting at the beginning of the modern nature-nurture debate, with Darwin and Galton, this book describes how evolution posed a challenge to humanity by demonstrating that humans are animals, and how modern social science was necessitated when humans became an object of natural science. It clearly sets out the most common misconceptions such as the idea that heritability means that a trait is 'genetic' or that it is a justification for eugenics.

Genres: Genetics, Psychology, Science, Biology

212 pages, Paperback

Published November 21, 2024

Reviews

[Ben Ertman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gotta love a book that you read in the author’s literal voice.

[Johan Zvrskovec · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked it very much. The book is written in a provocative, in-your-face style for behavioural genomics researchers, which also makes it a funny read sometimes. It doesn't shy away from difficult but relevant questions about some topics, such as individual vs group differences, where I think it improves on some of the descriptions made in Katheryn Paige Harden’s book. It clearly describes the problems of causal inference from genetic variants (and environment) to complex trait outcomes, the relative uselessness of contemporary heritability estimates in this process, and how to interpret genetic association results in general as most commonly describing noisy and difficult to interpret correlations contaminated with spurious gene-environment correlations. For a non-native English speaker, the book is a goldmine of useful terms to explain the above concepts, among other things covering the spectrum between essence and outcome, and introducing the ecotype. Despite the ‘gloomy’ tone regarding the future prospects of finding informative genetic associations for predictive or therapeutic purposes for psychiatric disorder traits, the book however does a good job describing a field of research that at least has arrived at these conclusions as opposed to various essentialistic views that are covered early on in the book. For what it is worth, I think this is encouraging when continuing with behavioural genomic research, as according to the book, we are just unable to not keep looking.

[Marco Tullio Liuzza · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an excellent book for an easy introduction to the debate surrounding the results and methods of behavioral genetics. I really loved the way the author explained in plain language the details and implications of the methods for estimating the heritability of traits. An important lesson I learnt from this introduction is that different heritability estimates actually answer to different questions, which is an important point to take into account when considering the puzzling missing heritability problem (namely the large differences in estimates of heritability from studies and from genome-wide association studies).
What I liked less about this book is that the political leanings of the author chime in too often, and sometimes I felt he was engaging in some forms of motivated reasoning. But the author is definitely an authoritative source and, even when engaging in politically motivated reasoning, is always worth engaging with his arguments.

[Nathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really good overview, in particular of methodology used in genetic studies and their strengths and flaws. I think that this book does a great job of offering a realistic and impartial take on the state of research. In particular, I like how cautious it is to explain/interpret statistics without smuggling in naive assumptions just because variables in statistical apparatus have domain-causal-agent-sounding-names.

[Keesje · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best books on behavioral genetics ever written. How strange the statistical concept of 'heritability' is still in use and unfortunately so widespread misunderstood. Analyzing human behaviour with the ACE-model in mind does so much damage to real psychological understanding.

[Euan Young · Rating 4 out of 5]

Important book.

[lin poy · Rating 5 out of 5]

will be recommending this