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Thread ID: 10407 | Posts: 1 | Started: 2003-10-11
2003-10-11 06:33 | User Profile
The following is from [url]http://home.comcast.net/~neoeugenics/nvn.htm[/url]
[New September, 2003] Nature via Nurture by Matt Ridley. I look at the latest book by Matt Ridley, with comments on two other books: Evolutionary Psychology and The Origins of Human Nature. Ridley's book is especially good and must be read, there is simply too much in it to cover in a review. I do however take Ridley to task for being politically correct, and denying the fundamentals of behavior genetics, after he supports those very tenets of evolution. About 20 pages long, I start with Ridley about half way through for those who want to jump to the politics of race denial.
Three recent books are bringing evolutionary psychology and behavioral genetics into the same canalized stream of thought - nature via nurture has replaced the nature versus nurture debate, making clichéd arguments out-of-date and frankly just plain annoying. Old egalitarian dogmas such as "there are no races," "anyone can become whatever they want to become," "children are the product of their upbringing," and "there are no differences between races in intelligence and behavior," have been overturned by ongoing research but still promoted by the media, Marxist (and timid) academics, and government policy wonks.
The first two books I look at here, Human Evolutionary Psychology (by Barrett, Dunbar, & Lycett, 2002, Princeton University) and The Origins of Human Nature: Evolutionary Developmental Psychology (by Bjorklund & Pellegrini, American Psychological Association, 2002), are straight-forward academically slanted books that are free of bias, even if they both avoid the more troublesome subject of racial differences in intelligence. The third book, Nature via Nurture: Genes, Experience, & What Makes Us Human (by Matt Ridley, 2003), is targeted for academic as well as the educated lay reader. It is entertaining, easy to read, and one leaves with a firm grasp of how nature and nurture interact in human development. However, Ridley seems to contradict himself when it comes to racial differences in intelligence and behavior. On the one hand, he provides all of the evidence that indeed one would expect differences between races to exist, while he states later on that there are no racial differences. My hunch is that after putting forth what some would see as Jensenism, he inserted some paragraphs that would give him plausible deniability with regard to the racial differences argument. Still, of the three books reviewed, for the effort required, Ridley's book is a must read for those interested in the subject, continuing where Pinker left off with The Blank Slate (see my earlier review).
All three books have an enormous amount of information, so I will cover just a few of the more interesting aspects in each as they relate to race, evolution and eugenics.
Complete article is at [url]http://home.comcast.net/~neoeugenics/nvn.htm[/url]
Conservative