Good quote.
I am copying it to marxism-thaxis.
Chris Burford
London
At 14:10 25/11/99 -0500, you wrote:
>Stephen Jay Gould writes in "Nurturing Nature," _An Urchin in the Storm:
>Essays about Books and Ideas_ (NY: Norton, 1987):
>
>***** ..._Not in Our Genes_ [by R.C. Lewontine, Steven Rose, and Leon J.
>Kamin] is an important and timely book, for it not only exposes the
>fallacies of biological determinism...but also presents a positive view of
>human behavior that could propel us past the stupefying sterility of
>nature-nurture arguments. A proper understanding of biology and culture
>both affirms the great importance of biology in human behavior and also
>explains why biology makes us free. The old equation of biology with
>restriction, with the inherent (as opposed to malleable) side of the false
>dichotomy between nature and nurture, rests upon errors of thinking as old
>as Western culture itself. The critics of biological determinism do not
>uphold the equally fallacious (and equally cruel and restrictive) view that
>human culture cancels biology. Biological determinism has limited the
>lives of millions by misidentifying their socioeconomic disadvantages as
>inborn deficiencies, but cultural determinism can be just as cruel in
>attributing severe congenital diseases, autism for instance, to
>psychobabble about too much parental love, or too little. (148) *****
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