It Ain't Necessarily So: The Dream of the Human Genome and Other Illusions - Softcover

Lewontin, Richard

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1862074437 ISBN 13: 9781862074439

Publisher: Granta Books, 2001

Synopsis

This work demystifies some of the most controversial issues in the life sciences today. It looks at topics ranging from Darwin to Dolly the sheep, including biological determinism, heredity and natural selection, evolutionary psychology and cloning. Biology now dominates scientific enquiry and the headlines, as geneticists claim to have accounted for yet another human trait or ailment. However, exaggerations and misunderstandings about what biology can tell us are common. This collection of essays offers observations on the exact state of scientific knowledge. Lewontin casts an eye on the temptation to overstate the power of biology to explain everything we want to know about ourselves.

About this title

Review

Leading geneticist Richard Lewontin's It Ain't Necessarily So: The Dream of the Human Genome and Other Illusions consists of a collection of essays written over a period of 17 years for the New York Review of Books dealing with various aspects of biology and human biology in particular. Lewontin discusses Darwin, Mendel, natural selection, heredity, and the current state of play in modern genetics while damning what he sees as widespread biological determinism from the sociobiology of the recent past to the current "vulgar Darwinism" of the present. IQ testing, and gene therapy, evolutionary psychology, and feminist notions of gendered knowledge all come under fire.

The title essay "The Dream of the Human Genome" is a review of nine major books up to 1992 and an attack on the Genomic "grail knights" that, in Lewontin's view, represent administrative and financial organisations rather than a promising research program. On this view the sequence of the human genome is not a trail leading to the Holy Grail, it will not reveal what it is to be human nor change our philosophical view of ourselves, nor, perhaps, will it translate into therapeutic techniques. Lewontin wants to arm the general public against the seductiveness of biological explanations which "often seem to smell of material reality even when they are equally speculative".

Lewontin is a working scientist who knows the importance of philosophy. He is also a superb essayist and this collection is a waffle-free, informative, unpretentious eye-opener. The book leaves you sceptical about the integrity of scientists and more circumspect about claims concerning the universal explanatory reach of biology. --Larry Brown

Review

'The sweep and scepticism of his arguments is always exhilarating and usually spot-on. This is a fine and important book, and a very necessary corrective to all sorts of popular fallacies.' Guardian; 'The painstakingly, highly accessible, but penetrating quality of his work is essential reading. Lewontin is one of the most sensible exponents in a field plagued by hype and hysteria.' Sunday Times; 'Lewontin...is a working biologist and a wonderfully stylish writer. If you read only one book on genetics this year, make sure it is this one.' The Times; 'It Ain't Necessarilly So is an elegantly written and lucidly argued critique of the myth that genes are fate. Lewontin is one of the great unsung figures of post-war science.' New Statesman; 'Few writers, and even fewer scientists, possess Lewontin's strength of vision, breadth of knowledge or stylistic poise.' New Statesman; 'A cool, impressive intelligence presides over It Ain't Necessarily So.' Daily Telegraph; 'Richard Lewontin...provides a valuable antidote to the current hyperbole surrounding the Genome Project.' Scotland on Sunday; '...brilliantly provocative essays on matters of the science industry and biology...written with an elegance that won't tolerate grandiose claims, but they're also the work of a practising scientist, He is the sensible, accessible, essential expert.' The Scotsman

About this edition

• Publisher: Granta Books
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 1862074437
• ISBN 13: 9781862074439
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320