Certainly not the last word, but a lot of interesting turns of phrase and provocative findings to enrich the all-absorbing...
More on the ongoing debate of whether heredity or environment is in charge of who we are, from the assertive but knowledgeable English science writer Ridley.
Rather than just another exercise in stating the mutual dependence/interaction of genetic and environmental factors, the author provides examples of new-found genes that may turn on or off, may be more or less active, may or may not trigger a cascade of other gene actions, depending on circumstances. Nor is “the gene” always well-defined, he states. It can often be spliced in multiple ways, using alternative forms of component parts (the exons) with variable effects in various tissues. So, on the gene side, much variety, and on the nurture side, contexts galore, creating circles of complexity and feedback that render cause-effect statements (à la determinism) moot. Ridley’s examples and inferences include genes and their mutations in the course of evolution that influence brain size and neuronal connections, personality, sexuality, language, culture, aggression, and nurturance, but still operate as cogs in the wheel of experience. Ultimately, he declares in favor of free will. He avers that we must replace linear with circular causality, “in which an effect influences its own cause”—sounding just like a physicist talking about quantum mechanics. Before reaching that point, Ridley cites a dozen graybeards over the century who have kept the N/N debate alive, with some kind remarks for Boas and Durkheim, even Lorenz and Tinbergen, but excoriation for Freud, Skinner, and Watson. Trouble is, for all Ridley’s celebration of mutuality, some of the evidence he cites, such as twin studies, comes down strongly in terms of genes determining personality; while other data suggest that prenatal and infant experience (albeit via environmental influences on genes) are irrevocable.
Certainly not the last word, but a lot of interesting turns of phrase and provocative findings to enrich the all-absorbing study of genes and behavior.Pub Date: June 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-06-000678-1
Page Count: 272
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
Not only the definitive life, but a tour de force by a master.
One of history’s most prolific inventors receives his due from one of the world’s greatest biographers.
Pulitzer and National Book Award winner Morris (This Living Hand and Other Essays, 2012, etc.), who died this year, agrees that Thomas Edison (1847-1931) almost certainly said, “genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration,” and few readers of this outstanding biography will doubt that he was the quintessential workaholic. Raised in a middle-class Michigan family, Edison displayed an obsessive entrepreneurial spirit from childhood. As an adolescent, he ran a thriving business selling food and newspapers on a local railroad. Learning Morse code, he spent the Civil War as a telegrapher, impressing colleagues with his speed and superiors with his ability to improve the equipment. In 1870, he opened his own shop to produce inventions to order. By 1876, he had money to build a large laboratory in New Jersey, possibly the world’s first industrial research facility. Never a loner, Edison hired talented people to assist him. The dazzling results included the first commercially successful light bulb for which, Morris reminds readers, he invented the entire system: dynamo, wires, transformers, connections, and switches. Critics proclaim that Edison’s innovations (motion pictures, fluoroscope, rechargeable batteries, mimeograph, etc.) were merely improvements on others’ work, but this is mostly a matter of sour grapes. Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone was a clunky, short-range device until it added Edison’s carbon microphone. And his phonograph flabbergasted everyone. Humans had been making images long before Daguerre, but no one had ever reproduced sound. Morris rivetingly describes the personalities, business details, and practical uses of Edison’s inventions as well as the massive technical details of years of research and trial and error for both his triumphs and his failures. For no obvious reason, the author writes in reverse chronological order, beginning in 1920, with each of the seven following chapters backtracking a decade. It may not satisfy all readers, but it works.
Not only the definitive life, but a tour de force by a master.Pub Date: Oct. 22, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9311-0
Page Count: 800
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: July 14, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2019
A book that describes what kangaroos do and offers unusually beautiful pictures of them doing it. One old male bending forward while scratching his back looks like nothing else found in nature- -except maybe a curmudgeonly old baseball manager with arthritis in the late innings of another losing game (in fact, baseball players would appear to be the only animals who scratch themselves as much as kangaroos do—bellies, underarms, Iwago captures every permutation of scratching). At other times, they look preternaturally graceful and serene. Some of Iwago's (Mitsuaki Iwago's Whales, not reviewed) photographic compositions flirt with anthropomorphism and slyly play to our urge to see ourselves in the animals. But kangaroos are so singular that there's always something about the cant of a head or the drape of a limb that makes you think you flatter yourself that there is any kinship. They remain wondrously different.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-8118-0785-1
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1994
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