Genes, Determinism, and God

Every few months a headline announces the discovery of a gene for some behaviour, and behavioural genetics now reports the heritability of traits as unexpected as religiosity and political affiliation. Denis Alexander traces how the old argument between nature and nurture has swung back and forth for centuries, often pushed by ideology, and shows how developmental biology, genomics, epigenetics and our growing grasp of neuronal plasticity have undermined that tidy opposition.

From there he turns to what is at stake: human freedom, moral responsibility, the workings of the legal system and religious belief. His conclusion is a considered one, that genuine free will, often shaped by genetic variation, emerges from an integrated picture of the human person drawn from contemporary biology. A rigorous, humane book for anyone who suspects that we are more than our DNA and wants the science to back it up.