The Mirage of a Space between Nature and Nurture

by Evelyn Fox Keller

In this powerful critique, the esteemed historian and philosopher of science Evelyn Fox Keller addresses the nature-nurture debates, including the persistent disputes regarding the roles played by genes and the environment in determining individual traits and behavior. Keller is interested in both how an oppositional “versus” came to be inserted between nature and nurture, and how the distinction on which that opposition depends, the idea that nature and nurture are separable, came to be taken for granted. How, she asks, did the illusion of a space between nature and nurture become entrenched in our thinking, and why is it so tenacious? Keller reveals that the assumption that the influences of nature and nurture can be separated is neither timeless nor universal, but rather a notion that emerged in Anglo-American culture in the late nineteenth century. She shows that the seemingly clear-cut nature-nurture debate is riddled with incoherence. It encompasses many disparate questions knitted together into an indissoluble tangle, and it is marked by a chronic ambiguity in language. There is little consensus about the meanings of terms such as nature , nurture , gene , and environment . Keller suggests that contemporary genetics can provide a more appropriate, precise, and useful vocabulary, one that might help put an end to the confusion surrounding the nature-nurture controversy.

Genres: Science, Philosophy, Nonfiction, Biology

120 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2010

About the author

Evelyn Fox Keller (born 1936) is an American physicist, author, and feminist and is currently a Professor of History and Philosophy of Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Keller has also taught at New York University and in the department of rhetoric at the University of California, Berkeley.

Keller received her B.A. in physics from Brandeis University in 1957 and continued her studies in theoretical physics at Harvard University graduating with a Ph.D. in 1963. She became interested in molecular biology during a visit to Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory while completing her Ph.D. dissertation. Her subsequent research has focused on the history and philosophy of modern biology and on gender and science.

She is also on the advisory board of FFIPP-USA (Faculty for Israeli-Palestinian Peace-USA), a network of Palestinian, Israeli, and International faculty, and students, working in for an end of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories and just peace.

Reviews

[Alexander · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was not the book I thought it would be, and for that, I'm awfully grateful. To begin with, 'Mirage' doesn't take it upon itself to dispel the idea of the nature-nurture divide. In fact, that such a divide is in someways entirely spurious is the point from with the book begins, rather than the conclusion to which it builds. Instead, the question posed here is of a different kind: why, despite its obvious shortcomings, does the divide still retain such a hold on the imagination? From whence does the 'mirage' itself come? While acknowledging its multiple sources - political, social, historical - it's to the biology itself that Fox Keller turns, in order to trace out its origins in the very science so often invoked as its root.

Interestingly, it's not even the science as such, but the language in which it is couched that is the object of Keller's analyses, which is here a matter less of empirical investigation than of conceptual clarification and demystification: when biologists speak of heredity, just what is it that they mean? And when elsewhere, they speak of the causes of differences in traits, just what exactly is at stake? Although at first blush coming off as a bit of a fiddly and even all-too-technical of a concern (have you ever paused to register the distinction between causes of 'traits' and causes of trait difference? Because it makes all the difference in the world...), it's in the detail where the devil resides, and Keller's art is in showing just how much those details really, really matter.

Indeed, after reading this, there's just no way I can take for granted the many popular press articles that declare, every now and then, the discovery of the 'gene for X', or the 'hereditary basis of Y', without now having to stop and ask - but did the study really show that? And if it did, in what sense did it do so? Far from being a paean to scepticism though, 'Mirage' is ultimately a book of conceptual hygiene; its message isn't one of casting suspicion on science, it's one of adhering to its results all the closer. And while I can't recommend this for those just getting into the study of biology - Keller does assume a minimum of terminological familiarity with the field - for anyone with an already half-decent grasp, Keller's passion for precision is simply scientific and - why not? - philosophical gold.

[Acadia · Rating 4 out of 5]

A thought-provoking read. The premise is not that we are debating “nature vs nurture” wrongly, but rather that it’s odd that we see them as opposing options to begin with. Of course both are required and it’s not necessary to see one as contributing X% to a trait and the other Y%. What sticks with me is the bucket analogy - if Billy pours water to fill 40% of a bucket and Suzy fills the remaining 60%, then we can be clear on their contributions. But what if Suzy holds the hose and Billy turns on the water at the spigot? Simply having a genome gets you nowhere.
What IS possible is asking what percentage each contributes to VARIATION in traits across a population. We have to move to thinking at the population level for these questions to make any sense. Language in this area is probably a source of the issue, with words like “heritability” having multiple meanings, both technical and colloquial. Another thing for biologists to ponder is how easily we slide from analyzing the effect of genetic mutants on a phenotype to inferring the role of a given gene in normal function - this is also not logical.
Quite dense, meant for specialists in biology with patience for philosophical writing style.

[Sharad Pandian · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's a short (~85 pages) argument that talk about nature-nurture for individuals is misguided. First she argues that the origin of the notion of the nature and nurture in the contemporary sense should be traced to Francis Galton, who "conjoins two domains on the tacit assumption that they are initially disjoint" (16).

Then, she points that if there were two hoses filling a bucket, it makes sense to talk of x% of work done by one of them. If one person brings the bucket and one person brings the hose, then such talk is moot.

Instead, what scientists do in their work is switch to:

1. Talk about trait differences instead of traits

this is precisely the point of Hans Kummer’s analogy to drums and drumming. It is useless to ask whether the drumming that we hear in the distance is made by the percussionist or his instrument because each of the two variables on which the sound—the percussionist’s performance (x) and the resonance of the instrument (y)—is influenced by the other in ways that simply do not permit separation. Yet if we hear two different sounds of drumming in the distance, we can ask and perhaps determine whether the difference between the two sounds is caused by a difference in drummers or by a difference in drums, or even how much of the net difference in sound is caused by the former and how much by the latter— provided, of course, the drummer’s performance does not depend on the drum being used. (35)

if there were no interaction between changes in genetic and environmental (nongenetic) factors, it would be logically possible to parse the causal contributions of alterations in each of these factors to a change in phenotype. Were such conditions to be satisfied, we would be able to say, for instance, that 40 percent of the difference between the two sounds we heard was due to the change in drums, and 60 percent was due to the change in drummers. Or that 45 percent of the difference in height between Suzy and Billy was due to the difference between their genotypes, and 55 percent was due to nongenetic differences (e.g., nutrition) between the two. This can be important information, yet it still does not allow us to say anything about the proportion of genetic to nongenetic influence in the formation of the trait. (36)

However, even if various independent variables that make a difference are identified, this still isn't necessarily a full account of the causes of the trait itself. This would be like "attempting to understand the causal dynamics of vision by studying all the ways in which blindness (an extreme example of phenotypic difference) can be induced" (40).

2. Talk about populations instead of individuals

For group differences, the question we need to ask is, how much of the variation we hear in the sound of drums is due to variation in drummers, and how much is due to variation in drums? And to answer this question, we must turn to the statistical analysis of populations. Which is precisely how Fisher reformulated Galton’s question (54-5)

Importantly, this is because of the switch from the informal notion of "heritable" (meaning capable of being passed on) and the technical, statistical notion of "heritability."

Keller's argument is that there's slippage between this statistical analysis of trait difference and more informal ways of speaking. She's quite open about how none of this is new - it's already present in work by Richard Lewontin, Ned Block, and David Moore. Her contribution is giving a reasonable number of examples of this slippage still happening, and trying to diagnose why this happens:

This is the sense in which the classical gene is often said to be a ‘‘difference maker’’ (see, e.g., Sterelny and Griffths 1999; Moss 2003). But a gene was taken not only to be a difference maker; it was also assumed to be a trait maker. It was both the entity responsible for the difference observed, and (at least implicitly) the entity responsible for the trait which has undergone a change—i.e., the trait in which a difference has been observed. We might say, then, that a certain confounding of traits and trait differences was built into the science of genetics from the very beginning. (43)

She ends by giving suggestions about language use (apart from the exercise of care), including "perhaps we should rephrase the nature-nurture question, and ask, instead, how malleable is a given trait, at a specified developmental age?" (75) and "Today, when biologists refer to the importance of genetics, they are generally referring to dna rather than genes, and confusion would be greatly diminished if talk of genes were to be replaced by talk of dna." (77)

Whether this is an issue for just language is a question that's been raised. As Lorraine Daston puts it in her review of this book:

Yet the old opposition of nature versus nurture stubbornly persists, and not only in the popular press. Why? Keller’s answer is: slippages of language. Our habitual ways of speaking about heredity, development, and traits routinely conflate individuals and populations, traits and trait differences, mutations with mutants. She recognizes that politics also plays a muddling role but contends that language is the chief villain. Can linguistic hygiene alone exorcise metaphysical demons? If so, then this is the book to do it.

[Duane Henning · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was expecting more of an argument about the impossibility of treating nature and nurture as separate. The book does that, but the focus is on the drifting of definitions with terms and the resultant confusion. A good read, but I was expecting an argument from scientific findings rather than an argument for an acknowledgement of semantic confusion. Less a problem with the book and more a problem with my expectations.

[John Tatlock · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fascinatingly dense/terse writing, but ultimately sort of redundant w/ lots & lots of re-stating (which makes sense in the context of the argument, but still...)

[Nicole · Rating 1 out of 5]

Strongly disliked. It read like a PHD dissertation (maybe it was). Couldn't get through it.

[Johnny Wilson · Rating 4 out of 5]

As another reader mentioned in a review, one may open this book with a preconception that it's going to be very much about the scientific knowledge showing how nature and nurture are indistinguishable. This book integrates some of this information, but it is primarily about the semantic muddles occurring that influence our interpretations of data. For example, there are numerous usages of "heritability" and "heritable," and flip flopping between meanings leads one to conclusions that are either incoherent, unwarranted, generally ill-contrived, etc. . . The book is mainly about how we ought to go about fixing linguistic issues and do away with disconnects . Indeed, changing up how we use language will greatly influence what questions we are asking because the questions will become not merely rephrased, but rather shifted entirely. Thus, managing these semantic shenanigans with talk of genes, inheritance, heritability, and inheritance as well as nature/nurture will influence the direction of which scientific inquiry will go.

[Massimo Monteverdi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sembra più un dibattito filosofico che scientifico. Il dilemma storico su cosa influenza di più l'essere umano tra geni ereditati e ambiente circostante non è mai stato risolto. Perché, come fedelmente ricostruisce il testo, è sbagliato porre la domanda come un'alternativa. I due elementi si sovrappongono e ciascuno influenza l'altro, in misura diversa. Tra evoluzione della scienza ed epigenetica.

[Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quite the unique topic. This book is one of a kind. Worthy of consideration especially for researchers attempting to map causal variants to phenotypes.