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http://www.salon.com/books/what_to_read/index.html?story=/books/laura_miller/2010/03/07/genius_in_all_of_usDavid Shenk's new book, "The Genius in All of Us: Why Everything You've Been Told About Genetics, Talent, and IQ Is Wrong," is 300 pages long, and more than half of those pages are endnotes. You need to offer up a lot of evidence when your goal is to overturn a concept as commonplace as the idea that genes are the "blueprints" for both our physical bodies and our personalities. Above all, what Shenk wants to communicate is that "the whole concept of genetic giftedness turns out to be wildly off the mark -- tragically kept afloat for decades by a cascade of misunderstandings and misleading metaphors." Instead of acquiescing to the belief that talent is a quality we're either born with or not, he wants us to understand that anyone can aspire to superlative achievement. Hard, persistent and focused work is responsible for greatness, rather than innate ability.
Shenk does have a lot of evidence for this assertion, most of it coming from geneticists and other biological researchers who are perplexed at the way their disciplines get depicted in the media. "Today's popular understanding of genes, heredity and evolution is not just crude, it's profoundly misleading," Shenk writes. While most scientists long ago rejected the idea that nature and nurture are two separate factors competing in a zero-sum game to dominate human behavior, laypeople still cling to the idea that whatever aspect of ourselves isn't caused by our environment must be caused by our genes, and vice versa. In recent decades, heredity has gotten most of the credit; the host of the brainiest NPR talk show in my area inevitably prompts every expert to confirm that whatever they're discussing -- mathematical ability, wanderlust, ambition, mental illness -- is genetically determined.
According to Shenk, and he is persuasive, none of this stuff is genetically determined, if by "determined" you mean exclusively or largely dictated by genes. Instead, "one large group of scientists," a "vanguard" that Shenk has labeled "the interactionists," insists that the old genes-plus-environment model (G+E) must be jettisoned and replaced by a model they call GxE, emphasizing "the dynamic interaction between genes and the environment." They don't discount heredity, as the old blank-slate hypothesis of human nature once did. Instead, they assert that "genes powerfully influence the formation of all traits, from eye color to intelligence, but rarely dictate precisely what those traits will be."
Shenk's particular interest is talent, genius and other instances of extraordinary ability, whether the skills be athletic, artistic or scientific. Musicians and athletes most often get held up as examples of the triumph of innate gifts. According to Shenk, we are erroneously led to believe that stars like Tiger Woods and cellist Yo-yo Ma were born to climb to the top of their fields, when in fact the environments they grew up in are just as responsible (if not more so) for their spectacular feats. To prove this point, he methodically debunks several widely cited examples that supposedly prove the reality of inherited gifts: child prodigies, twin studies and geographical pockets of excellence at particular sports. In all of these cases, he demonstrates, observers have ignored and downplayed the enormous role of environment (especially in early childhood) in favor of touting the preeminence of genetics.<snip> More at the link..
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