The Birth of the Mind: How a Tiny Number of Genes Creates the Complexities of Human Thought

I didn't plan on reading this book but it jumped into my hands, and I couldn't put it down. I already knew a lot about the topic, being a fan of Richard Dawkins and Stephen Pinker. But it was filled with great descriptions of fascinating lab work, which really pulled me in. Now if you're not a fan of Dawkins or Pinker, it's probably for religious or political reasons; and I'd say to you: don't worry about this book. The subject matter was familiar to me because of those authors, but Marcus has none of their ideological verve. There's not even any philosophy. He didn't beat the nature/nurture horse: with this close of a look, it's just unnecessary. This is just about genes and brains; that's all. So, if you're looking at this book, here are some others that I like that I think you might want to consider: Richard Flanagan, The Problem of the Soul Stephen Pinker, How the Mind Works Matt Ridley, The Red Queen Matt Ridley, Genome

Marcus says, "From a mind's-eye view, brains may seem awfully special, but from a gene's-eye view, brains are just one more elaborate configuration of proteins." This book is a compilation of very recent research about how the brain as an organ puts itself together. This process is not unlike the process for any other organ, but results in a product that is highly malleable and ripe for environmental adjustment. The book has been explained very adequately by many reviewers, so I will mainly try to provide you with some representative quotes and add only a few comments. About Nature vs. Nurture: "The nativists are right that significant parts of the brain are organized even without experience, and their opponents are right to emphasize that the structure of the brain is exquisitely sensitive to experience." " At the core of our story has been a tension between the evidence that the brain can - like the body - assemble itself without much help from the outside world, and the evidence that little about the brain's initial structure is rigidly cast in stone.....To an earlier generation of scholars, the evidence for innateness and the evidence for flexibility seemed almost irreconcilable. Most scholars simply focused their attention on the stream of evidence they were more impressed with....Both sides have their points. The brain is capable of awesome feats of self-organization - and equally impressive feats of experience driven reorganization. But the seeming tension between the two is more apparent than real: Self-organization and re-organization are two sides of the same coin, each the product of the staggering amount of co-ordinated suites of autonomous yet highly communicative genes." The above non-debate (to a hard science person) is well-covered, but the jist of the book is more about how the pre-wiring occurs, relying occasionally on computer science analogies: "Each gene acts like a single line in a computer program." "As soon as the IF part of the gene's IF-THEN rule is satisfied, the process of translating the template part of the gene into it's corresponding protein commences." "With one more trick - regulatory proteins - that control the expression of other genes - nature is able to tie the whole genetic system together, allowing gangs of otherwise unruly free-agent genes to come together in exquisite harmony." "Each gene does double duty, specifying both a recipe for a protein and a set of regulatory conditions for when and where it should be built. Taken together, suites of these IF-THEN genes give cells the power to act as parts of complicated improvisational orchestras." How do the "billions of neurons in your brain" develop "trillions of connections between them." There is a well done scientific description given, but I also like his caricature description: "Even in a simple organism like a worm, the mechanics of (neuron) migration are so complicated they could have

This is an extraordinary book. It brings the reader up to speed on the fascinating and important research that is uncovering how genes and the environment conspire to build brains of extraordinary complexity. The writing is crystal clear, the style is engaging, and Marcus makes the cutting edge science he's discussing accessible to any intelligent reader. This is science writing at its best. If you enjoy reading other great science writers like Pinker and Dawkins, you'll find this a great read!

If you are among those still arguing the "nature versus nurture" debate has been resolved, visit an English Lit class. The humanities continue skirting the notion that genes play a role in our mental life. It challenges our ideal of "free will". Marcus, in this matchless survey, argues that "what's good for the body is good for the mind". And few dispute that genes build bodies. The mind, like the body, has deep evolutionary roots. Even the simple organisms inhabiting the planet with us today show how brains develop. Increased complexity of body is reflected in brain structure. And the mind, he reminds us, resides in the brain.Marcus explains his notion with a wealth of research, most of it very recent. He explains how similar our brain structure is to that of other animals and what that implies for behaviour. The mechanism of building brains is common to all animal life, even when the final product varies. Genes transmit signals - "recipes" - of structure and function for all parts of the body. Brains, he continually reminds us, are not that different from livers. Neurons proceed from points of origin, finding appropriate areas to reside and assume functional duties. From origin to operation they show flexibility and adaptability. In this, Marcus argues, it's clear the brain is no different than any other organ. It is our brain's interaction with the rest of the body that sets us somewhat apart from the other animals. Language, the element we hold so dear in protecting our unique status, is given a thorough examination in this book. There are no "language genes", Marcus stresses, but there are identified genes, notably FOXP2, known to impact speech ability. He explains that looking for "genes for" something is futile. Genes interact in too convoluted a manner to expect simple associations between a few nucleotides and something as complicated as speech.Marcus offers a novel term to counter those railing against the strawman "genetic determinism". Having explained how evolution has led to building brains, he declares them "prewired" but not "hardwired". "Prewired" means that basic functions are spelled out biologically, but don't limit our interaction with our environments. All brains permit flexibility by neurons interacting with each other as conditions vary. We can learn because we are prewired to learn. However, we've only begun the research where our brains are concerned. Marcus presents this trove of information with amazing clarity. His topics aren't simple mechanisms or ideas, yet he conveys it all with graceful logic. He avoids "dumbing down" the science, yet nothing is lost in his presentation. His theme and supporting examples, buttressed by a glossary and extensive bibliography, are expressed in delightfully accessible prose. Some explanatory graphics depict various elements and mechanisms in furthering the reader's understanding. The underlying concept is "universality" and it's easy to see how his idea

It's a great pleasure to be able to highly recommend this book. I was suspicious of it because of the hype sent from the publisher, and the extremely broad topic covered for a science book, but it turns out that this is really good science writing. Gary Marcus certainly knows his stuff and has a distinctive talent for making complex things crystal clear. More, he has an infectious positive enthusiasm for scientific exploration. With most popular science books about the human mind, the author tends to allow the material to be organized by their political and moral thinking. By that I mean the way the author thinks about human reason, autonomy, free will, and the essential nature of humans in general. So we most often have authors interpreting scientific data to show how the mind is: hardwired (or flexibly changing during our lives); highly specialized (or a general purpose problem-solver), built from adapted computational modules (or is essentially a useful artifact or "spandrel"). Each of these different ways of selecting and interpreting the data reveals a different way of thinking about ourselves. A hardwired, specialized, modular brain gives a very different way of thinking about ourselves than does an autonomous reasoning agent, and the implications for morality and for politics are profound. While cognitive science and biology are our greatest allies in the physical understanding of the world, when we try to rely on science to understand ourselves, we have been forced to speculate and extrapolate from them heavily in trying to get an accurate picture of humanity.I bring this up to illustrate why Gary Marcus' "Birth of the Mind" is such a notable book. Somehow he manages to steer a course between the jagged rocks of innateness, the whirlpools of environmental determinism, and even the usual awkward compromises. Marcus celebrates the triumph of interactionism (genes plus environments) not by simply claming it to be true but by explaining exactly what it means and what it tells us. This is not a speculation about how genes and minds might be related; it is a carefully built skeleton of the conceptual bridge between the two. "Nature and Nurture" are not waved away here but deeply engaged. "Nature" here is not a collection of guesses about how we acted in the stone age and the challenges we faced in our evolutionary history, but an exposition of cellular biology and the way genes guide the construction of minds as a direct consequence of how they construct bodies. This is a wonderful change from the polemics we find too often in books discussing research in genetics, evolution, and human behavior. Marcus isn't entering into one side of the technical debates on human nature here as we find in much of the popular sociobiology literature and popular behavior genetics literature. He isn't arguing about whether the mind is modular or whether it is a product of evolution. Nor does he argue about whether we have a soul or free will. A