Overview

'In a refreshingly lucid and accessible manner, the authors step delicately and successfully through the minefield of the nature-versus-nurture debate that has pitted biologists against social scientists for centuries' - Times Higher Education Supplement 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.

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9780099267621

Table of Contents

Reviews

If you have time to read only one book about human development, read this one -- Jared Diamond, Professor of Physiology at UCLA and Pulitzer Prize Winner This thoughtful and engaging book should be on everyone's reading list New Scientist Refresh your brows with the cool breeze of reason that is Bateson and Martin's overview... fascinating Guardian At last! In their sane and lucid - and much needed - corrective to the torrent of overblown genetic rhetoric, Patrick Bateson and Paul Martin take the reader on a journey through humanity's seven ages -- Steven Rose Bateson and Martin have delivered what others have claimed to provide: a solid, signposted road out of the trench war between nature and nurture -- Marek Kohn Independent

If you have time to read only one book about human development, read this one -- Jared Diamond, Professor of Physiology at UCLA and Pulitzer Prize Winner This thoughtful and engaging book should be on everyone's reading list * New Scientist * Refresh your brows with the cool breeze of reason that is Bateson and Martin's overview... fascinating * Guardian * At last! In their sane and lucid - and much needed - corrective to the torrent of overblown genetic rhetoric, Patrick Bateson and Paul Martin take the reader on a journey through humanity's seven ages -- Steven Rose Bateson and Martin have delivered what others have claimed to provide: a solid, signposted road out of the trench war between nature and nurture -- Marek Kohn * Independent *

The human body is an amazing piece of equipment. In this design-oriented age, we are starting to ask more searching and subtle questions about how we came to be this way, and this enjoyable book contributes a great deal of information and insight to the discussion. Bateson, a professor of ethology at Cambridge University, and Martin, who has also studied and lectured at Cambridge, plant themselves in the midst of the traditional opposition between nature and nurture. 'It is obvious that experience, education and culture make a big difference to how people behave, whatever their genetic inheritance. Yet behavioural and psychological development are frequently explained in terms of the exclusive importance of one set of factors, either genetic or environmental,' the authors write. 'Debates about behavioural and psychological development often degenerate into sweeping assertions about the overriding importance of genes (standing in for 'nature') or the crucial significance of the environment (which then becomes 'nurture').' The authors instead poist the notion of a developmental 'kitchen', wherein ingredients and method are finely balanced in making up a human personality as time goes by. Rather than paralyse the reader with a barrage of scientific jargon, they summon writers as diverse as Jonathan Swift and Bruce Chatwin to give functional examples of human behaviour. The various chapters take us through the stages of life, examining all sorts of puzzles: the effect a name can have on a child (those with exotic names are more likely to drop out of college courses, a Harvard study found); the peculiar behaviour of identical twins; and whether or not is is possible to change habits after adulthood. This book which pulls together the insights of biology and psychology to give a broader view of the evolutionary process, is deceptively simple in style but brims with stimulating examples. (Kirkus UK)

If you have time to read only one book about human development, read this one -- Jared Diamond, Professor Of Physiology At Ucla And Pulitzer Prize Winner This thoughtful and engaging book should be on everyone's reading list New Scientist Refresh your brows with the cool breeze of reason that is Bateson and Martin's overview... fascinating Guardian At last! In their sane and lucid - and much needed - corrective to the torrent of overblown genetic rhetoric, Patrick Bateson and Paul Martin take the reader on a journey through humanity's seven ages -- Steven Rose Bateson and Martin have delivered what others have claimed to provide: a solid, signposted road out of the trench war between nature and nurture -- Marek Kohn Independent

Author Information

Patrick Bateson is Emeritus Professor of Ethology (the biological study of behaviour) at Cambridge University, a fellow at King's College, Cambridge and a Fellow of the Royal Society. He has also been the provost of King's College, Cambridge and the Biological Secretary of the Royal Society. He received a BA in Zoology and a PhD in Animal Behaviour from Cambridge University, held a Harkness Fellowship at Stanford University and was Director of the the Sub-Department of Animal Behaviour at Cambridge for ten years. He has edited and co-edited several books, including Mate Choice (1983), The Development and Integration of Behaviour (1991), Behavioural Mechanisms in Evolutionary Perspective (1992) and the series Perspectives in Ethology. Paul Martin studied biology at Cambridge University, where he acquired a First in Natural Sciences and a PhD in behavioural biology; and at Stanford University, where he was a Harkness Fellow. He subsequently lectured and researched at Cambridge University. He is the co-author, with Patrick Bateson, of Measuring Behaviour (1993), and author of The Sickening Mind (1998).

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