The Mirage of a Space between Nature and Nurture
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- $23.99
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- $23.99
Publisher Description
In this powerful critique, the esteemed historian and philosopher of science Evelyn Fox Keller addresses the nature-nurture debates, including the persistent disputes regarding the roles played by genes and the environment in determining individual traits and behavior. Keller is interested in both how an oppositional “versus” came to be inserted between nature and nurture, and how the distinction on which that opposition depends, the idea that nature and nurture are separable, came to be taken for granted. How, she asks, did the illusion of a space between nature and nurture become entrenched in our thinking, and why is it so tenacious? Keller reveals that the assumption that the influences of nature and nurture can be separated is neither timeless nor universal, but rather a notion that emerged in Anglo-American culture in the late nineteenth century. She shows that the seemingly clear-cut nature-nurture debate is riddled with incoherence. It encompasses many disparate questions knitted together into an indissoluble tangle, and it is marked by a chronic ambiguity in language. There is little consensus about the meanings of terms such as nature, nurture, gene, and environment. Keller suggests that contemporary genetics can provide a more appropriate, precise, and useful vocabulary, one that might help put an end to the confusion surrounding the nature-nurture controversy.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
According to Keller (A Feeling for the Organism), a noted feminist philosopher and historian, the nature/nurture debate can be traced back to ancient Greek discussions of physis (timeless nature, or "what is") and nomos (law, custom, culture). But the author isn't out to mine history; she wants to examine how and why the simple act of placing the word "versus" between concepts of nature and nurture perpetuates the debate about the science of what shapes us. Her concern "is with the tendency to think of nature and nurture as separable and hence as comparable, as forces to which relative strength can be assigned..." She contends that much of the problem stems from "the instability of language"; even the meaning of words like "gene," "heritable," and "heritability" are problematic. Keller proves her points with a highly scientific and scholarly approach that may be too dense for the layperson. Yet her arguments, as academic as they are, relate to us all, and get at the essence of our differences. In the end, Keller is hopeful that "the new science of genetics" will offer a way out of the debate, and possibly eliminate the debate altogether.
