Such an interesting book! I had to get it for a class, but my goodness, I'm glad I did! I would've wanted to read it anyways! Recommended it to my family to read. Lays out complicated topics in fascinating, comprehensible ways!

If more of my teachers had introduced biology the way Moore does, I might have ended up researching biology instead of family processes.

Eye-opening, very readable, seems well-researched.

We are not determined by our genes. Our traits are caused by complex interactions between genes and the environment. The message is simple but it's so difficult for us to fully appreciate. The author himself admits that, at first, he failed to fully understand and appreciate this basic fact.

Well, thank goodness he did. We, the general public, need an easy-to-understand book that helps us to begin to understand this complexity and let go of the simplistic and destructive notions of genetic determinism. The value of such a book as this cannot be overstated.

I've read many books lately - and I've taken a couple of courses - trying to better understand the issues of evolution and of development because I've noticed just how important it is in our daily lives and in society, to do so.

This book is one of the easiest to understand (I wish I had it when I first started out and didn't know a ribosome from a cartoon hand of Mickey Mouse) and it has plenty of information that I had not heard about before. It has helped me to more clearly understand the subject despite the fact that it's, at least, the 20th book I've read on the broad subject.

-- Are traits such as height, eye and hair color, determined by genes? What about the number of fingers on each hand and how the cortex of our brain is structured?

-- Can diet play such a major role in the health of someone with a "genetic" disorder characterized by severe mental retardation, so that a person can, instead, have normal intelligence?

-- Do some "identical" twins have a significantly different environment in the womb from each other while other sets of twins have a much more similar environment? And can this influence the degree of similarity between the set of twins?

-- Can we say with certainty that human genes coding for wings, (or any other body part that we do not possess but was possessed by animals that we descended from), do not exist? Do we know for certain that genes coding for mammalian-type teeth exist dormant in toothless, beaked chicks?

The answers to these, and many other, questions - mostly about biological traits - may surprise you and may help to free you from the simplistic, misleading, popular beliefs, so common in our culture - regarding both biology and psychology - that have caused, and are still causing, so much harm.

If this guy has ever actually read a book on behavior genetics or population biology, it doesn't show. The "words" he puts into the mouths of behavior geneticists are things that behavior geneticists (such as Plomin and Bouchard) don't in fact say. His interpretation of the heritability coefficient, for example, is simply wrong. His misunderstanding of that statistic is typical for a psychologist (I am one myself), and even more typical of the lay public, and therefore it is something that needs to be corrected. But blaming behavior geneticists for getting it wrong is just misinformed. What Moore says is, for the MOST PART correct. He just attributes the mistakes he is trying to correct to the wrong people.

I found the general tone of the book arrogant, and for that reason I found it hard to read, which is a shame because the book contains a valuable message that many psychologists still need to learn (even though that lesson has been out there and available to them for over 50 years). The way to get that message out, however, is not by setting up and then knocking down a straw man, which is what Moore does.

I think the book finds its voice in chapter 4 and subsequent chapters. It's too bad the author didn't start the book there. Even so, he presents his material in a tone that suggests he believes (or wants us to believe) that it is "new stuff" that "genetic determinists" (whoever they are) are unaware of. In fact, I remember studying a lot of this stuff in undergraduate biology classes several decades ago. His discussion of brain development is also outdated and was so even 10 years ago when this book was being written, although that's not really a serious detriment to the point he is trying to get across.

I had high hopes for this book (it came highly recommended). I was disappointed. Too bad because a lot of people, mostly psychologists, need to understand this stuff. And they don't!

While Mr. Moore presents his view with reasonable facts of science, it leaves one with the impression "what do we do now?" I never got a clear picture of his definition of the Nature vs. Nurture debate.

The author of this book misrepresents the nature of the conclusions drawn from behavior genetics and oversimplifies how they do things. He writes as if they have not made any progress since Francis Galton founded the field and he repeatedly equates it with eugenics.

For one, sociobiologists and behavioral geneticists are well aware that everything occurs via gene-environment interactions.

Secondly, he completely fails to substantiate the claim that it is absurd in theory to separate gene and environment in concept. Of course you can separate them in concept. I have stands of DNA in me. There is an environment outside of me. Those are completely different things. Of course what he means is a bit more specific. He means that when discussing a phenotype it is impossible to separate the contributions made by genes and those by environment. Except that it is. Even when the environment completely changes the phenotype via epigenetic modifcations, we know exactly how this is done. There's nothing mysterious or inseparable or irreducible about it.

Here's some examples of the inaccuracies and straw man attacks in the book.

On page 41 he writes that heritiability estimates tell us about what causes *variability* in traits, but not what causes traits themselves. Fair enough, but he uses this to argue that NOTHING is genetically determined. What then about diseases like cystic fibrosis where the specific alleles and conditions for their expression are known? It follows a perfectly predictable autosomal recessive pattern of inheritance. So, how exactly is Moore's dynamic developmental perspective supposed to undermine the fact that C.F. is genetically determined?

"What is the value, then, of knowing what accounts for differences among people in a unique situation, if it is within our power to easily change situations?" For one, that's assuming we DO have the power to change how a gene is expressed just by changing a situation. Certainly for certain behavioral traits this is possible, but otherwise, he's basically just saying "Lalalalala I can't hear you geneticists I can't hear you lalalala" He COMPLETELY misses the point here of scientific understanding. Sometimes the goal is not just to understand what accounts for differences, but to understand for what accounts for SIMILARITIES across different situations over time.

He goes on to say that "for behavior geneticists, the goal is to predict the appearance of traits by looking at genes -- only genes! .... knowing what affects non-genetic factors have on a trait's appearance is simply not of interest to behavior geneticists, who consequently just ignore these factors." (pg. 46) That's completely and utter nonsense. There is TONS of research investigating the role environmental factors have on gene expression. Being that I have a stack of research papers right next to me, allow me to list just a few.

- Genetic and Environmental Influences on Human Psychological Differences, Bouchard & McGue, 2003

- Reconsolidation involves histone acetylation depending on the strength of memory, Federman, Fustinana, & Romano, 2012

- Epigenetics, brain evolution, and behaviour, Kervene & Curley, 2008

- Epigeneitc regulation of nervous system development by DNA methylation and histone deacetylation, MacDonald & Roskams

- Epigenetic Gene Regulation in the Adult Mammalian Brain: Multiple Roles in Memory Formation, Lubin, 2011

- Epigenetics: Behavioral Influences on Gene Function, Part 1. Maternal Behavior Permanently Affects Adult Behavior in Offspring, Orgen & Lombroso, 2008

I have more, but you get the picture. All of those studies involve understanding the roles genes play in biological function and take into account environmental factors, not just as measurement error or what can't be accounted for by genes, but HOW the environment works with genes. So his claim that behavior geneticists have no interest in these things is a lie and a low brow attack on the field.

Of course, there's also the famous prairie vole study. I'll leave it to you to look it up, but it can be found in Braintrust: What Neuroscience Tells Us about Morality and Animal Behavior: An Evolutionary Approach, 8th Edition

The point is that no one thinks everything is determined by genetics. I recommend taking a look at the book The Triumph of Sociobiology. In it there is a chapter called Sociobiology and Genes and there is a section within called "The Myth of The Genetic Determinist". The author discusses a lot of the same things that David Moore does, except he doesn't draw scientifically irresponsible conclusions. Sadly, this book is the same sort of crap we used to see from S.J. Gould, Richard Lewontin, and Leo Kamin -- all otherwise great scientists who were scared to death of the implications their fields might have on their socio-political views, so they did everything they could to twist scientific fact to fit their social concerns.

Moore provides an illuminating antidote to full-blown genetic determinism and all the inherent problems of adopting this perspective. I have used this book to introduce students to the developmental systems perspective in my undergraduate seminar on developmental psychobiology, primarily because it is a well-researched text and written at a level that my students can understand and easily digest. My students come away from Moore's book with a new perspective regarding the complexity of mechanisms that undergird the acquisition of human traits and a much greater appreciation for the need to examine our human experience through a developmental lens rather than relying on dated, monolithic modes of explanation. Most say they have never heard this perspective before and feel it is an important counterweight to much of the misguided dichotomous thinking that is still taught in our introductory developmental psychology courses.

Ok

Muy interesante y con muchísimas información valiosa, además de fácil de leer