A TROUBLESOME INHERITANCE
Genes, Race and Human History
Nicholas Wade
The Penguin Press; 278 pages; $27.95
INHERITANCE
How Our Genes Change Our Lives - And Our Lives Change Our Genes
Sharon Moalem with Matthew D LaPlante
Grand Central Publishing; 255 pages; $28
In his 2007 book, A Farewell to Alms, the economic historian Gregory Clark argued that the English came to rule the world largely because their rich outbred their poor, and, thus, embedded their superior genes and values throughout the nation. In her comprehensive takedown, the historian Deirdre N McCloskey noted that Mr Clark's idea was a "bold hypothesis, and was bold when first articulated by social Darwinists such as Charles Davenport and Francis Galton in the century before last". Indeed, over the past 150 years, various white Western scientists and writers have repeatedly offered biological explanations for Caucasian superiority. They have repeatedly failed because, as Ms McCloskey noted, none ever mounted a credible quantitative argument.
Now, in A Troublesome Inheritance, Nicholas Wade, a longtime science writer for The New York Times, says modern genetics shows that "the three major races" - Africans, Caucasians and East Asians - are genetically distinct races that diverge much as subspecies do, and that their genetic differences underlie "the rise of the West".
This racial divide started, Mr Wade says, when humans began migrating out of Africa some 50,000 years ago. As groups entered diverse environments, they faced differing pressures that selected for gene variants creating different traits, including dissimilar social behaviours. Genetic selection for distinctive physical traits in different populations, such as lighter skin to maximise sunlight absorption, is well established and widely accepted. Decidedly not well established, however, is Mr Wade's proposal that genetic selection gives different human populations distinct behaviours. Because this is the heart of his argument, and because social behaviour is far more complex than, say, skin colour, it seems fair to ask that his evidence clear a high bar. Does it?
Mr Wade builds much of his case around historical ideas like Mr Clark's hypothesis about English breeding; the political scientist Francis Fukuyama's notion that Western democracies represent a high point in the evolution of social institutions; and the economic historian Niall Ferguson's view that the West "succeeded because it was an open society". These values and institutions, Mr Wade says, were both shaped by and drove the evolution of Caucasian genes.
As a key event he cites Europe's adoption, starting around AD 1000, of the principle that law is the ultimate ruler. This, Mr Wade argues, allowed a transition from closed, insular tribal social organisations to more open, interactive nation-states, and Europe then entered a self-reinforcing cycle: its rules-based, trade-oriented culture selected for gene variants generating trusting and productive social behaviour, and these genes in turn made the culture more trusting and rewarding of hard work.
Meanwhile, the other two major races developed their own distinctions: East Asians (and their genes) evolved to embrace a disciplined, state-dominated culture more respectful of rigid authority. Sub-Saharan Africans evolved to better fit and support their culture's greater allegiance to tribal imperatives than to wider forms of social organisation.
Mr Wade runs into much trouble making this argument. He indulges in circular logic. While warning us to avoid filtering science through politics, he draws heavily from conservative historians who minimise the roles played by political power, geographic advantage, momentum, disease and dumb luck.
And despite his protests to the contrary, Mr Wade often sounds as if he sees the rise of the West as a sort of stable endpoint of human history and evolution - as if, having considered 5,000 years in which history has successively blessed West Asia, the Far East and the Ottoman Empire, he observes the West's current run of glory and thinks the pendulum has stilled.
If Mr Wade could point to genes that give races distinctive social behaviours, we might overlook such shortcomings. But he cannot.
He tries. He tells, for instance, of specific gene variants that reputedly create less trust and more violence in African-Americans and, he says, explain their resistance to modern economic institutions and practices. Alas, the scientific literature he draws on is so uneven and disputed that many geneticists dismiss it outright.
The result is a deeply flawed, deceptive and dangerous book. Its most pernicious conceit is that it's finally safe to talk of racial genetics because "opposition to racism is now well entrenched".
One can find more productive ways to think about genes. As a physician who researches and treats rare genetic disorders, Sharon Moalem, the author of Inheritance, sees firsthand how sharply DNA can constrain our lives. Yet "our genes aren't as fixed and rigid as most of us have been led to believe", he says, for while genetic defects often create havoc, variable gene expression (our genes' capacity to respond to the environment with a flexibility only now being fully recognised) can give our bodies and minds surprising resilience. In his new book, Mr Moalem describes riveting dramas emerging from both defective genes and reparative epigenetics.
Mr Moalem's earthy, patient-focused account reminds us that whatever its promise, genetics yet stands at a humble place.
©2014 The New York Times News Service
