Fashion matters in science. When I was young the fashion was for a great deal of weight to be given to theories of human mutability. Statistical techniques taught us a huge amount about how the environment altered human behaviour. The evidence that poverty in one generation created a high chance of poverty in the next regardless of IQ was – and still is – enormous. So was the evidence of what happens to attitudes when they are culturally encouraged or discouraged from birth. For example, beliefs about what a women is capable of and the right way for her to behave are very different in Saudi Arabia or in modern Britain. Those attitudes to upbringing have an enormous impact on the character of women, their opportunities and their mental health at different times and in different places.
The fashion now is for science to focus a lot more on genetics and on physicality. Science has learned a massive amount about genes and what they do to us and also succeeded in mapping which bits of the brain do what and when. Much of this work is utterly fascinating and reveals really interesting new information about what forms our characters and about the triggers for certain behaviour.
Unfortunately that useful increase to our knowledge has begun to be confused and garbled by a fashion for assuming that the genes and the brain chemistry are the real deal and all this stuff about environment is so much froth.
The thing that has triggered me to make this observation is reading book claiming to be a No 1 international best seller on brain science. Dick Swaab is a Dutch scientist with years of experience in the field and with so much new research coming out I read the book with real hope that I would get a good grounding in a field of work where important new discoveries are being made every week. Instead I came across some very strange pieces of opinion dressed up as scientific discovery.
The example that annoyed me most was being reliably informed that: “depression is basically a developmental disorder of the hypothalmus”.[1]
At first glance that might not sound like such a strange thing to say. The author gives us plenty of good evidence that you can locate an imbalance in the brains of people with depression to a particular site. It is only after a moment’s reflection that you begin to realise how strange and narrow minded the statement is – especially since it comes from a person claiming to be the leading expert in the field.
Depression is known to be correlated to poverty. Do poor people have more disorders of the hypothalmus? Or is there by any small chance something in the experience of living on the poverty line that is fundamentally depressing? Depression is also known to come and go with many people experiencing a short period of depression in their lives and then recovering. Did their hypothalmus programme them to have a problem at a particular period of life – or was it something to do with the death of a close friend, a car accident, a loss of employment or any of those other environmental changes which are also known to be triggers for a period of depression?
Then there is the issue of gender. Could it be that there is something in the experience of being a woman and having fewer opportunities in society, a higher and more relentless workload and being trapped with caring responsibilities that prevent significant numbers of them from having much fun? Could those experiences just possibly send more of them to the doctor complaining of depression? Not according to this leading expert in brain science. Apparently: “female hormones stimulate the stress axis whereas the male hormone inhibits the stress axis, which would explain why women are twice as likely as men to suffer depression.”
There you have it girls. Nothing to do with society. Nothing to do with your personal experiences. You inherited the wrong genes so take a couple of chemicals and with a bit of luck we might be able to cure you of some of the damage caused by that femininity thing!
Don’t get me wrong. I am not arguing that genetics or the physicality of the brain does not have a significant impact on what you experience in life. What I am arguing is that a fashion has emerged for paying far too much attention to this and for downplaying economic, social and personal experiences. It would be naïve in the extreme to claim that everything is down to nurture and we can change inherited personalities or physical characteristics of the brain and their impact. But it is every bit as naïve to focus heavily on nature and downplay the influence of nurture.
An over emphasis on genetic inheritance is not value neutral science. As soon as you produce arguments that we are really the product of our genes, brain chemicals and brain structure the implications for politics are simple. There is not much point in trying to improve social mobility, women’s equality, or educational opportunity because we’ve been dealt a hand by inheritance that we really can’t escape.
The alternative is one that recognises the importance of both environment and inheritance and that leads to very different conclusions. People can be changed. Their place in society can be improved. Their circumstances can shape their opportunities and education can help them maximise those opportunities. Humanity can develop. I think that view is much more balanced, nuanced and realistic. It is also massively more optimistic.
And I don’t think the optimism of my world view can entirely be put down to a few genes and my current brain chemistry!
[1] We are Our Brains, Penguin, p115