It Ain't Necessarily So: The Dream of the Human Genome and Other Illusions Book

Maybe it is

This book is a collection of nine essays from The New York Review of Books, beginning in 1981, mostly on genetics, the genome and the Darwinian pantheon. The essays are presented with new footnotes and cross references followed by an Exchange and/or an Epilogue in which the material is updated and some contrary points of view presented and addressed. The expression is erudite, polished and complex, the tone authoritative and at times slyly satirical and at least a microbe's breath away from the pompous.

The first essay, "The Inferiority Complex" is a review of Stephen Jay Gould's The Mismeasure of Man (1981) which deals with the IQ conundrum. Lewontin's main point here, in agreement with Gould, is that "there may be genes for the shape of our heads, [but] there cannot be any for the shape of our ideas" (p. 9). I'm not sure I agree with that rousing call to the uniqueness of human kind, but I am confident that no one has yet refuted such a point of view. Not entirely as a surprise Gould (in a jacket blurb) acknowledges Lewontin as "the smartest man I have ever met."

Gould is not the only one to sing praises to Lewontin's intellect and understanding. Noam Chomsky chimes in with an acknowledgment of "the impressive quality and significance" of Lewontin's essays, while a book I just finished reading, Steve Jones's excellent Darwin's Ghost (1999) is dedicated to Lewontin, who showed him "what evolution can and cannot explain." Perhaps that is Lewontin's main strength, as an anchor on the ship of biological presumption that would sail us to a questionable nirvana of the pre-determined. I can say from my own experience that the very learned professor reminds me of someone I would call "the Edmund Wilson of book critics biological." He is also the very distinguished Alexander Agassiz Research Professor at Harvard and the author of several books on genetics and related subjects, most characteristically perhaps, Not in Our Genes (1984) with Steven Rose and Leon J. Kamin.

Why then am I not entirely thrilled with this beautifully wrought collection of unquestionably significant and stimulating essays? I think it's that I disagree with his point of view and emphasis, and feel that the sequencing of the human genome really is a significant step toward our understanding of who and what we are, and I don't care who, or who did not, get rich in advancing it. I also think that the practical applications from such information may prove valuable in ways we cannot begin to predict. I am a fool for knowledge if only for knowledge's sake, and I wonder why Lewontin has expended so much energy knocking the project. His real criticism of the effort, despite his use of the derogatory words, "dream" and "illusion" and even "fetish" (p. 135) is presented on page 177: "The promise of great advances in medicine, not to speak of our knowledge of what it is to be human, is yet to be realized from sequencing the human genome."

Who could disagree with that? He also writes on page 151, "Causal stories are lacking...nor is it clear, when actual cases are considered, how therapies will flow from a knowledge of DNA sequences." Again, who could disagree? However this is political-speak. It says nothing that can be seized upon and found derogatory, yet hints at failure and disappointment. Characteristically, Lewontin writes nothing that one can find direct fault with, yet by indirection and association he belittles the effort. I would note that the word "fetish" is not used directly as a coloration of the project, but as an indirect association. People have said that The New York Review of Books is really The New York Review of Each Other's Books, and therefore constitutes a close-knit club with a shared political point of view. I will withhold such a judgment since I have only a passing familiarity with that prestigious publication.

Putting all that aside, I found myself, while reading the third chapter, "Darwin, Mendel, and the Mind," wondering if Lewontin was really conscious of his own thought processes when on page 103 he relates that he "passed among three very different mental states all under the control of the willful I." Ah, if only that "willful I" really was in control and had the power to consciously regulate our mental states. Lewontin seems unaware that it takes many years of devoted practice to still the "monkey mind" and allow one an observation of one's mental processes. He asks rhetorically (still on p. 103), the question he calls the "central problem...for neurobiology," namely, "What is "I"? This is indeed a profound question, asked at least as early as the Upanishads. The modern answer, which Lewontin must know, but does not present, is that the I is an illusion that we cannot help but believe. He goes on to argue with Daniel Dennett against the idea of consciousness as a "metaphorical delusion" (p. 105) without once realizing that there is a crucial difference between a "delusion," metaphorical or otherwise, and an illusion. If he looks more closely he might find that consciousness is a trick of the evolutionary process, the main purpose of which is to make us fear death by forcing us to identify intensely with our particular phenotype. Our subjective appreciation of consciousness is a wondrous byproduct of that identification.

--Dennis Littrell, author of "Understanding Evolution and Ourselves"