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I would give this book five stars even if most of the criticisms given in these other reviews were valid. The book is full of fascinating detail on how we develop as human beings, how our brains develop, and what most of the experts have said on the subject. This alone is worth the price of the book and the time to study it. It is the type of book I like to go through, underline key areas of interest, and return to from time to time. There is a lot of meat to digest!
The coverage gives a good insight into the nature-nurture question, the impact of evolution on basic human nature, the environmental impact, the role of parents, culture and peers in shaping the developing child, and the overriding importance of our brains in determining what we are like and the type of adult we grow to be.
I liked the fact that the author resisted the temptation to give any easy answers like we are a blank slate, or fixed by our human nature, or completely pliable to human conditioning or behavioral training. Most popular books on these topics like to jazz up their appeal by such wild assertions. These two authors present the intertwined nature of all the forces that shape us and avoid simplistic answers about what determines the adult we become. There are still many unanswered questions and the reader should understand that this book may not solve the riddle, but it will give you the foundation to savor the mystery of how our children grow. And it does even more: there are many helpful insights to be gained that give guidance to how we should raise our kids, and warnings of some things we should not be doing.
The authors give a good general survey of the subject and it is clear the experts are very divided. But, many of the disputes are, to the general reader, of little importance, and often the differences appear insignificant. The biggest controversy, as shown by those reviewers who support evolutionary psychology, concerns how much we are determined by evolutionary forces from the dim past. These are basically the genetic determinists who argue that human nature was shaped in the primordial past and we are chained more or less to the innate traits acquired by the survivors from those ancient times. Now, we are subject to our "human nature," at least the basic instincts to want food, the will to survive, the selfishness to want to own things all to ourselves, to reproduce, have sex, bond into groups, etc. But that's a far cry from defining what a modern human adult is like, what his capabilities and desires are, whether he is responsible, caring, persistent, smart, wise, socially mature, engaging, etc. Human nature is just a starting point. It's like saying a car has four tires and a steering wheel and that is all you need to know about it! As Katherine Hepburn told Bogart, "Human nature is what we are supposed to rise above."
What the authors do best is describe how the most recent discoveries in neurobiology have found that our entire beings are primarily shaped by our brains and that shaping occurs over the first 25 years of our lives, mostly in the first 15 years, and persists to some extent till death. This fact underscores the importance of training, environment, and free will and is the best counter argument to the environmental psychologists. A developing child's brain is so plastic, and undergoes such vast development over an extended period, that the latent human nature, the hunter-gatherer instincts, are largely submerged under the weight of the civilizing adaptation made throughout our lives. There are several ramifications to these findings: Our "intelligence" is a many spendored thing, a mix of memory, reasoning, impulse control, self-restraint, imagination, persistence, resiliency, and all such characteristics that make successful well adjusted and competent adults. Our brains do not just determine our IQ type of intelligence but regulate all the other competencies that frequently trump the ability to get good school grades.
The gradual development of our brains makes humans uniquely different from the animal and plant kingdoms, most of which come into their living forms prewired and without any capacity to alter their ability to deal with a changing environment. The authors attempt to explain this uniqueness as a result of evolutionary forces but they do not succeed. Modern humans appeared rather suddenly on earth about 60 to 100 thousand years ago and the source of their extraordinary capability has not ever been explained. But Quartz ans Sejnowski do make a good case that it is our ability to grow our brains after birth that makes us superior to all other life forms. They use such helpful terms as we have "an internal guidance system" that lets us develop "a user's guide to life" by assimilating lifetime experiences that give us wisdom and allows our brains to eventually operate at maximum efficiency and clarity. The need for positive environmental stimulus and training to achieve such growth gives us reason to think twice about the importance of our schooling and parenting methods. And it is inspiring to see just how far it is possible to reach for our full potential, that we have the power to be better than our genes might indicate, and that positive development can definitely trump genes.
- Hardcover: 336 pages
- Publisher: William Morrow; 1 edition (October 1, 2002)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0688162185
- ISBN-13: 978-0688162184
- Product Dimensions: 6 x 1.1 x 9 inches
- Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
- Average Customer Review: 13 customer reviews
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Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#2,876,923 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #4994 in Scientist Biographies
- #3465 in Medical Neuropsychology
- #4249 in Popular Neuropsychology
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