It Ain't Necessarily So: The Dream of the Human Genome and Other Illusions

Is our nature -- as individuals, as a species -- determined by our evolution and encoded in our DNA? Now that we have deciphered our genome, can we use that knowledge to cure diseases, solve social problems, or understand what makes us human? Today biologists are proposing answers to questions about [...]
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Is our nature -- as individuals, as a species -- determined by our evolution and encoded in our DNA? Now that we have deciphered our genome, can we use that knowledge to cure diseases, solve social problems, or understand what makes us human? Today biologists are proposing answers to questions about mankind that have long been asked by philosophy or faith or the social sciences. Their work carries the weight of scientific authority and attracts widespread public attention, but is often based on what the renowned evolutionary biologist Richard Lewontin calls "the pervasive error that confuses the genetic state of an organism with its total physical and psychic nature as a human being." In these ten essays, all of which were originally published in The New York Review of Books, Lewontin combines sharp criticisms of overreaching scientific claims with lucid expositions of the exact state of current scientific knowledge -- not only what we do know, but what we don't and maybe won't anytime soon. In discussions of heredity, natural selection, and gender, evolutionary psychology and altruism, sex surveys, cloning, mapping the human genome, and genetic engineering in agriculture, he casts an ever-vigilant and deflationary eye on the temptation to look to biology for explanations of everything we want to know about our physical, mental, and social lives. The second edition of this collection includes new essays on genetically modified food and the completion of the Human Genome Project. It is an indispensible guide to the most controversial issues in the life sciences today.