We are all of us mutants. The best defence against designer babies is to find more genes and swamp people in too much knowledge. I hope so, but I fear not. It turns out, Harris argues, that parents don t count for much at all in the development of adult personality. Genetics, of course, and peer groups.
Families just don t matter.
Harris is not without her critics, and readers, if they are to understand the nuances of the complex development of personality, deserve at least a paragraph or two about competing models. Given that I have not mastered the literature for all 23 of Ridley s chapter subjects, this example leaves me wondering what else he might have left out. That critique aside, however, Ridley s numerous caveats throughout the book warning readers not to fall into the trap of oversimplifying a complex interaction of biology and environment will, I hope, help us override the tendency to divide nature into binary choices like nature and nurture even if some metagene gene pushes us to do so. The Search for God in an Age of Science and Denying History .