Design For A Life: How Behaviour Develops - Softcover

9780099267621: Design For A Life: How Behaviour Develops
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Paperback. Pub Date: 2000 Pages: 280 in Publisher: Vintage How and why does each of us grow up to be the person we are What role do genes play in shaping our behaviour and personalities Are our characters the fixed or can we change as adults How does early experience affect our sexual preferences Why do children play These are all questions about behavioural development - the lifelong process of growth and change from conception to death that is central to an understanding of human nature. Written in clear and simple language this book offers an understanding of the science that lies behind many current controversies in parenting. education. social policy and medicine. The lucid style. carefully chosen scientific examples and literary quotations make it both accessible and entertaining.

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Product Description:
How and why does each of us grow up to be the person we are? What role do genes play in shaping our behaviour and personalities? Are our characters fixed, or can we change as adults? How does early experience affect our sexual preferences?

Design for a Life explains the science of behavioural development - the biological and psychological processes that build a unique adult from a fertilised egg. Instead of the conventional opposition between nature (genes) and nurture (environment), Design for a Life offers a new approach that synthesises biology and psychology. It explores the developmental cooking processes that give rise to individuals, and considers in turn how these processes have evolved.
Review:
Setting nature up in opposition to nurture makes for great headlines: remember the recent tabloid announcement that the gene for "genius" had been discovered? But the assumption that human qualities must be either innate or acquired makes for confusing debate and downright bad science.

Bateson and Martin set out to explain the "real" picture--and it's one of mind-boggling complexity. If genes equip people with particular personalities, then we are jukeboxes stuffed to bursting with alternative selves just waiting for the right environmental factors for them to flourish. Genes are but the simple rules to life's complex and unpredictable chess-game.

And unpredictable it certainly is. Sometimes, identical twins behave more like each other when they are brought up apart. Genetically linked differences in behaviour can stand out like sore thumbs in one environment, disappear in another. The order in which siblings are born may be the most important influence on their subsequent development.

But if the picture seems confusing, luckily the authors have had the wisdom and imagination to illustrate their account with literary quotations and references that add tremendously to the reader's understanding. After all, they are talking about the same things: that dizzying mix of inherited behaviours and life experiences that we call human character.

Rarely has complex material been rendered so accessible and in so natural and mature a fashion. --Simon Ings

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  • PublisherVintage
  • Publication date2000
  • ISBN 10 0099267624
  • ISBN 13 9780099267621
  • BindingPaperback
  • Number of pages288
  • Rating

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Publisher: Jonathan Cape Ltd, 1999
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