Design For A Life

The human body is an amazing piece of equipment. In this design-oriented age, we are starting to ask more searching and subtle questions about how we came to be this way, and this enjoyable book contributes a great deal of information and insight to the discussion. Bateson, a professor of ethology at Cambridge University, and Martin, who has also studied and lectured at Cambridge, plant themselves in the midst of the traditional opposition between nature and nurture. 'It is obvious that experience, education and culture make a big difference to how people behave, whatever their genetic inheritance. Yet behavioural and psychological development are frequently explained in terms of the exclusive importance of one set of factors, either genetic or environmental,' the authors write. 'Debates about behavioural and psychological development often degenerate into sweeping assertions about the overriding importance of genes (standing in for 'nature') or the crucial significance of the environment (which then becomes 'nurture').' The authors instead poist the notion of a developmental 'kitchen', wherein ingredients and method are finely balanced in making up a human personality as time goes by. Rather than paralyse the reader with a barrage of scientific jargon, they summon writers as diverse as Jonathan Swift and Bruce Chatwin to give functional examples of human behaviour. The various chapters take us through the stages of life, examining all sorts of puzzles: the effect a name can have on a child (those with exotic names are more likely to drop out of college courses, a Harvard study found); the peculiar behaviour of identical twins; and whether or not is is possible to change habits after adulthood. This book which pulls together the insights of biology and psychology to give a broader view of the evolutionary process, is deceptively simple in style but brims with stimulating examples. (Kirkus UK)