Aurélien Thomas's Reviews > Nature via nurture: genes, experience and what makes us human

Matt Ridley doesn't disappoint. Similar to Genome: the Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters or The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature, both highly engrossing reads where he managed to be both accessible yet detailed enough to please lay readers willing to delve deeper than your usual pop science book, here's another masterpiece set to become a classic. Please note the telling title -it's not about nature vs nurture, but a view which seems to flip our understanding of human nature completely upside-down. Well, of course, we all know that what shapes our behaviours and capabilities are both a matter of genes and environment... or do we? The traps of determinism (be it biological or environmental) seem to loom large indeed, and reading around in the mass medias or the pop culture it still seem to be either/ or. Is the debate between the geneticists against the empiricists really over?

'Nature via Nurture' is wide encompassing, and as such it can be intimidating. As much as I love Matt Ridley, it's undeniable that he here gives his readers a lot to chew upon! It will be enthralling, engrossing, and fascinating as usual, but it will also requires some more efforts too. In fact, he structured his book by building a whole argument starting around an imaginary picture featuring crucial scientist and their theories -Darwin, Galton, James, Kraepelin, Freud, Boas, Durkheim, Piaget, Lorenz, De Vries, Pavlov, and Watson. Needless to say, from biology to anthropology and psychology and psychiatry and even linguistics, here's a multi-tentacles monster! Nevertheless, this is probably the best window offered into the fascinating interaction between genes and environment, a great lecture about the never ending feedbacks shaping us all as unique individuals.

Absolutely brilliant.