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Enormous progress has been made in just the past few years in understanding the way genes work. The human genome has been mapped out, as has the genome of a growing number of other species, including some of the primates to whom we are most closely related. We are on the threshold of solving some of the most challenging mysteries contained in how DNA prescribes and controls the way in which life forms are built and how they function.
We also are getting closer to better understanding our kinship with other species of life.
In this volume, Gary Marcus, Associate Professor of Psychology at New York University and a career laboratory investigator, takes us on a dazzling, whirlwind tour of the way in which genetic forces embryologically construct the human baby's brain and prepare it to tackle, comprehend, engage, and conquer the world. Reading the book is like attending a series of brilliantly clear, artfully constructed lectures that are as entertaining as they are informative. I consider myself fortunate to have taken the course and I heartily recommend it to others.
To quote the author:
The goal of this book is to unite the results of groundbreaking scientific research with studies of the psychology of humans and other animals—in other words, to take insights from the genome and use them to revamp our understanding of nature, of nurture, and of how they work together to create a human mind. [p. 11]
Marcus quickly gets to his central thesis: that the human brain is constructed in such a way as to prepare the newborn child to make immediate, effective use of the environmental input it encounters, and to do so in a remarkable fashion that deftly interweaves adaptation to the world and the establishment of control over it. Over the course of evolution, we have acquired genetically encoded, built-in capacities, which are active immediately upon birth, enabling us to accomplish this to a degree that no other species can match. One key ingredient is the ability to learn, and