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Title: What It Means to Be 98% Chimpanzee: Apes, People, and Their Genes by Jonathan Marks ISBN: 0-520-24064-2 Publisher: University of California Press Pub. Date: 01 November, 2003 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.92 (12 reviews)
Rating: 2
Summary: Post-modernist persiflage
Comment: Accepting the fallacy of Marks' title, let us start on a positive note. Marks wants to keep apes and humans separate. Fair enough. I don't want to live on termites on a stick, and it's doubtful chimps want to worry about traffic congestion, tax rates or political corruption. Marks wants scientists to do their job well. Who can argue? Marks has courage - he has the temerity to assault the venerable E. O. Wilson, the articulate Richard Dawkins and the revered Jane Goodall. Marks is against racism. Hardly debatable. Marks seems a pretty upstanding fellow. Why then, is this book such an insult to the intelligence?
Mostly because it is a froth of misleading statements, misdirected wrath, misconceptions and mistaken views of science. Marks goes to unusual lengths in dismissing the research achievements of many scientists in both field and laboratory. He blithely dismisses the disclosure that chimpanzee and human genes are nearly identical as "the most overly exposed factoid in modern science." It's not significant because it confuses precision with accuracy. From there, Marks goes on to castigate a legion of scientists for their failure to "get it right" the first time around. Few escape his lash - even Linneaus, who virtually invented classifying life, is a victim, and perpetrator, of cultural artifacts in naming species. This from a man who finds culture an unbridgeable chasm between humans and animals!
Marks spends much of the remainder of the book discussing racial/cultural undercurrents in science. He finds far too much of it in current anthropology. He's correct in this, but his case is "overblown"- a favourite phrase of his. In a welter of complaints, he finds but two scientists to exonerate of the charge: Richard Leowntin and - himself. He doesn't want any cultural or behavioural relationship between humans and the rest of the animal kingdom, a favourite plaint of Lewontin's. Any hint of sociobiology, which he incorrectly defines as the study of human behaviour, must be rejected. This attitude ignores the wealth of research published during the past generation.
Marks' shots against sociobiology would be amusing except that so many will accept them uncritically. Like his mentor, Marks wants humanity to evolve without any evolutionary baggage. Behavioural studies of modern animals are irrelevant according to Marks. Thus is cast aside the whole realm of Darwin's evolution by natural selection. At least as far as it concerns humans. This attitude fits adroitly with Marks' intended reader community. He blames science for many social attitudes, delving deeply into the history of science to build his case. His brief runs from Plato onward, ending with the efforts to map the human genome. Science has long suffered from its cultural roots. The case is flawed by Marks failure to recognize that all through history, science has sought to reveal natures' secrets. It's a process of fits and starts, each gain a limited success. That inability to "get it all right the first time" is inherent in the process. It accomplishes little to portray the process as invalid. If some people have not performed to his expectations doesn't mean science should give up trying.
The area that Marks clearly wants abandoned is understanding of what drives human beings. That some scientists want to look more deeply into the human genome he perceives as a wasted effort. Along with Lewontin, Marks rails against "genes for" this or that aspect of life - particularly human life. Are we to assume then that we should stop looking? Because faulty genes have been shown to invoke certain disorders but haven't been found for others, is the list now complete? He inveighs against looking for genes for criminal behaviour. We don't know enough about how DNA works to decide one way or another. Do we give up analysing how genes perform? And what exactly is criminal behaviour? Even Marks uses statistics of prison populations to build his case. But none of the Enron executives are in prison, nor are likely to be. Do we exclude them from genetic analysis to unravel what genes lead us to do?
This book will go far in inflaming the already anti-scientific attitude prevalent in North American schools. Statements such as "science is not generally accurate" and "scientific statements are routinely falsified" [p. 279] aren't likely to entice anyone into the scientific fold. Students will not be encouraged to enter science disciplines when they're told "it is no easier to get the average scientist to accept responsibility than it is to get the average four-year-old to accept responsibility. After all, Marks is a scientist himself, his statements must be valid. We must assume, it is supposed, that he and Lewontin stand alone by having donned the mantle of responsibility. Yet his book is permeated with complaints that statements made by other scientists have been uncritically accepted. Marks owes the scientific community an apology. More importantly, he owes every young person interested in science an apology for describing them as likely to become irresponsible children instead of aspiring grown-ups. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]
Rating: 5
Summary: He's yet to meet Ishmael
Comment: A catchy and provocative title is now de-rigueur for popular science books on the subject of genetics. It's somewhat surprising then that the message of WHAT IT MEANS TO BE 98% CHIMPANZEE is that it doesn't really mean that much at all. Marks takes a distinctly middle-of-the-road position on most of the scientific debate that has spun off from the human versus ape discussion. Marks says that "the extent to which our DNA resembles an ape's predicts nothing about our genetic similarity to apes, much less about any moral or political consequences arising from it."
In chapters such as "The Ape in You", "How People Differ from One Another" "The Meaning of Human Variation" and "Human Nature" the author lays out his views on hot-button topics such as the biological reality of "races" and "nature vs nurture". Marks is not a believer in strict genetic determinism and therefore does not take a reductionist view of human nature - i.e genetics as a causal factor for everything. He's somewhat more of a humanist but this nod to a more environmentally deterministic view does not extend to an all embracing view of our fellow primates. The non-human primates - Chimpanzees, Bonobos, Gorillas, and Oranutans have an increasing number of human advocates who say that there are moral and ethical consequences that stem from the genetic similarity between apes and humans. Primatologists such as Jane Goodall argue that the higher intelligence and emotional awareness of apes demands a distinction in how we view them, and more importantly, how we treat them. In the chapter "Human Rights for Apes?" Marks discusses the Great Ape Project and the long term objective of getting an U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Apes. Marks will have none of this and sees such positions as pretentiousness on the part of scientists.
The science on animal consciousness is still inconclusive especially as it relates to the Great Apes. It's in the area of self-awareness and higher order thinking ("thinking about thoughts") where much of the debate takes place but this is not Marks' primary interest. Marks' main point is that there is a better approach to understanding these issues, one that is holistic rather than a binary "either/or" argument. Marks introduces us to his speciality in chapter one - "Molecular Anthropology" - and tells us that it combines the reductive power of genetics with the humanistic vision of anthropology. It thus allows practitioners to steer clear of ideologically influenced science.
It's ironic because in arguing about the merits of his field of study, Marks himself comes across as tunnel-visioned and obviously enamored with his own view of things. This is the only problem with this otherwise well written and wide-ranging discussion on some of the current debates in science. Although Marks wouldn't support it because it talks about a sentient Gorilla, for me, Daniel Quinn's book ISHMAEL provides the best overview on this whole debate. Our scientific beliefs give us a view of the world. Ishmael says it's going to be hard for us to give it up because what we're doing is "right" and "giving up would mean that all along [we've] been wrong. It would mean [we've] never known how to rule the world. It would mean relinquishing [our] pretensions to godhood." As if to prove the point, this book can't end without trying to tackle the "big" questions. Marks concludes with a chapter on "Science, Religion, and Worldview".
Enjoy the book for what it is: a good general introduction to genetics, with particular reference to apes and ourselves. Just remember that scientists - even iconoclasts such as Marks who does a great job of cutting through the debate - still are subject to their own biases and particular worldviews. Science itself is still undecided on much of what you read about here.
Rating: 4
Summary: A good book with ideas which need to be expressed now.
Comment: Despite the author's raging anger and at times over the top invective, this is a very important book that at once demystifies genetic science and shows how genetic theories of human behavior have always been subject to cultural influence and in most cases in the absence of any hard evidence. Equipped with an arsenal of facts and historical case studies, Marks passionately warns us about the misuses of science. This is not to say he is any way anti-science or " Postmodern" as the armchair Sociobiologist Steven Haines implies. Opening on the offensive with a discussion on the genetic similarity between apes and humans Marks shows the similarity to be merely frivolous when we consider the we also share half our genes with fish and about a third with daffodils
Moving right along Marks addresses issues as diverse as the arbitrary nature of classifications, essentialism, not to mention worldview and religion. We learn that the classificatory schemes of the saintly Linneus perhaps had more to do with the man's views on breast-feeding that on
" how things are in selves" We also get a glimpse of how essentialist views of man have their origins in folk knowledge and societal prejudice which inevitability creeps into the conclusions we draw from empirical data.
While Marks can be overly critical of his field and his colleagues in general, it is a necessary antidote to the appalling bile and misinformation reported in the popular press in the name of science; which more often than not is accepted uncritically and taken as gospel in the pop science community.
From reports of the " Gay gene" to the genetic basis of female coyness and racial theories of intelligence, Marks shows there is simply no experimental evidence for any of these claims, and when there is, it is statistically spurious.
Simply interpreting social and psychological data in light of evolutionary theory and drawing vague inferences from physiology is not science. And Marks exposes it, again and again. This is Speculation and myth and the public should be under no obligation to take it as established science.
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Title: The Human Career: Human Biological and Cultural Origins by Richard G. Klein ISBN: 0226439631 Publisher: University of Chicago Press Pub. Date: 01 June, 1999 List Price(USD): $50.00 |
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Title: Mapping Human History : Genes, Race, and Our Common Origins by Steve Olson ISBN: 0618352104 Publisher: Mariner Books Pub. Date: 01 April, 2003 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Genetic Nature/Culture: Anthropology and Science Beyond the Two-Culture Divide by Alan H. Goodman, Deborah Heath, M. Susan Lindee ISBN: 0520237935 Publisher: University of California Press Pub. Date: 01 October, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: A Cognitive Theory of Cultural Meaning (Publications of the Society for Psychological Anthropology) by Claudia Strauss, Naomi Quinn ISBN: 052159541X Publisher: Cambridge University Press Pub. Date: 28 January, 1998 List Price(USD): $29.00 |
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Title: The Journey of Man: A Genetic Odyssey by Spencer Wells ISBN: 069111532X Publisher: Princeton University Press Pub. Date: 01 January, 2003 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
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