Beyond Versus: The Struggle to Understand the Interaction of Nature and Nurture

Preface

Every book has a nature, and a nurture. Its nature is that germinal idea, that nascent inclination to tell a story. The germinal idea for this book sprung from my fascination with the persistence of the nature/nurture debate. On the face of it, the nature/nurture debate is a scientific debate, and so it should be a debate about verified facts and empirical evidence. But if facts and evidence were all there is to the story, then two scientists (or two disciplines of scientists) should be able to look at the same data and reach the same conclusion. The persistence of the nature/nurture debate obviously suggests there is more to this story than just that. So what then is it? My goal was to expose the underlying philosophical disagreements that could lead two people (or two disciplines ) to look at the same data about genes and the environment and reach very different conclusions. These disagreements involve disputes about what certain concepts mean, debates about how explanation works in science, arguments about what methodologies supply those explanations , and controversies about the ethical implications of the conclusions. My nascent inclination was to draw on the tools of the historian of science, the philosopher of science, and the bioethicist to disentangle these underlying disagreements so as to make room for disputants who were once talking past one another to meet on common ground. A book’s nurture includes all the people who nourished and shaped that germinal idea. Fortunately for me, this book was nurtured by others for close to a decade. A number of advisors, mentors, colleagues, friends, and family gave graciously of themselves to discuss these issues with me, read versions of this material, and provide me with invaluable feedback: Garland Allen, Kevin Amidon, Rebecca Anderson, André Ariew, Lisa Aspinwall, Margaret Battin, Teresa Blankenmeyer Burke, Jim Bogen, Mark Borrello, Jeffrey Botkin, Ingo Brigandt, Samuel Brown, Teneille Brown, Gretchen Case, Carl Craver, Thomas Cunningham, Lindley Darden, Stephen Downes, Linda Carr-Lee Preface xii Preface Faix, Leslie Francis, Justin Garson, James Giordano, Paul Griffiths, Matthew Haber, Andrew Hamilton, Jonathan Hodge, Leslie Hogben, Eric Hutton, Annie Jamieson, Jonathan Kaplan, Brian Keeley, Maria Kronfeldner, James Lennox, Alan Love, Peter Machamer, Edouard Machery, Ron Mallon, Lucas Matthews, Erika Milam, Elijah Millgram, Sandra Mitchell, Lex Newman, John Norton, Robert Olby, Erik Parens, Lisa Parker, Laurence Perbal, Monika Piotrowska, Kathryn Plaisance, Anya Plutynski, Michael Pogue-Geile, Richard Purcell, Gregory Radick, Chris Renwick, Erin Rothwell, Susan Sample, Kenneth Schaffner, Thomas Schenkenberg, Jonah Schupbach, Jeffrey Schwartz, David Steffes, Jacob Stegenga, Karola Stotz, Omri Tal, Blake Vernon, C. Kenneth Waters, Mark Wicclair, Robert Wilson, and especially my wife—Dawn-Marie Tabery. I am especially grateful to Kenneth Schaffner at the University of Pittsburgh and Gregory Radick and Annie Jamieson at the University of Leeds for arranging to have students and colleagues go through an early version of the manuscript with a fine-toothed comb; I owe an additional debt to University of Utah students in my 2012 philosophy of science graduate seminar for doing the same. I also benefited from conversations or correspondence with a number of the scientists whose work is profiled in this book, including Avshalom Caspi, Roderick Cooper, Gilbert Gottlieb, K. Paige Harden, Kenneth Kendler, Terrie Moffitt, David Moore, Robert Plomin, Michael Rutter, and Daniel Weinberger. Thanks also to Pamela Speh for designing and creating figure 5.3. My research for this book was supported by the Tanner Humanities Center (University of Utah, 2013). I am also grateful to the numerous publishers, archivists, and individuals who have given me permission to reproduce figures, correspondence, and previously unpublished material. Leslie Hogben gave me permission to quote from correspondence from Lancelot Hogben, archived at the University of Birmingham. The University of Adelaide gave me permission to quote from correspondence from R. A. Fisher, archived at the University of Adelaide. Cambridge University Press allowed me to reproduce figure 2.1, which was first published in Fisher and Mackenzie (1923), “Studies in Crop Variation, II,” The Journal of Agricultural Science 13: 311–320. The American Philosophical Society Library granted me permission to quote from correspondence from Richard Lewontin and Theodosius Dobzhansky, archived at the American Philosophical Society Library. Elsevier gave me permission to reproduce figures in chapter 3, which were first published in Lewontin (1974), “Annotation: The Analysis of Variance and the Analysis of Causes,” American Journal of Human Genetics 26: 400–411. Ken Kobre allowed me to reprint his wonderful photograph of Richard Lewontin for my figure 3.4...