I never cease to be perplexed by the extent to which Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection (and its relationship to the genetics that underpins it) continues to be misunderstood and misrepresented – in the latter case, by those who seem terrified even of the mere suggestion that it might apply to humans. Humans, we hear, are not subject to Darwinian processes because their behaviour is dictated by culture rather than biology, that humans have free will and hence behave in ways that are uninfluenced by genes, that nurture is more important than nature [=genes] in our development as individuals, and so on.

One might suppose such ignorance excusable in the case of layfolk, although I am increasingly inclined to insist, with the philosopher Daniel Dennett, that failure to understand Darwin 150 years after the Origin of Species was published in a world where 95% of the population is literate is frankly inexcusable. In contrast, self-styled scientists who fail to understand Darwin – and there are an astonishing number of them, many claiming to be biologists – simply leave me gasping with incredulity: the only plausible excuse in this case seems to be intellectual dishonesty.

Matt Ridley’s latest book will, I hope, provide a welcome addition to the list of books that both these groups should read before pontificating on subjects about which they are self-evidently excruciatingly ignorant. What Ridley tries to do here is explain in considerable detail just how nature (genes) and nurture (circumstance and experience) are welded together in the intimate dance of ontogenetic development. Written in his usual elegant and entertaining style, replete with many fascinating historical asides and anecdotes, he steers the reader unerringly through the maze of intellectual confusion that has come to bedevil attempts to use evolutionary biology to understand and illuminate the human condition in the late twentieth century.

There are excellent sections on just how neurones find their way around the brain during development, the role of critical periods during development (language learning is the one most adults struggling to learning new languages are so conscious of) and on the seven meanings of the word “gene” as used by biologists down the ages. For the cognoscenti, they are the Mendelian [gene as archive], de Vriesian [gene as interchangeable part between species], Garrodian [gene as disease averter, as in those that control health or give us resistance to diseases], Crick-Watsonian [gene as recipe], Jacob-Monodian [unit of development], Fisherian [unit of selection] and, last but not least, the Dawkinsian [gene as unit of instinct].

Ridley’s account of this last issue is, I think, a particularly useful exercise because although, in my experience, evolutionary biologists invariably know what they are referring to when they talk about genes, others (biologists and non-biologists alike) have invariably confused these different senses of gene. That confusion has, I believe, been the single most important cause of the disputes that have troubled the last half-century of biology, and especially its relationships with the social sciences and humanities.

In summary: a book worth reading. Entertaining for the knowledgeable, but hopefully a source of clarification and a way forward for those who as yet lack knowledge of the real issues that underpin the Darwinising of Man.

Robin Dunbar, FBA
Professor of Evolutionary Psychology
School of Biological Sciences
University of Liverpool