The Birth of the Mind: How a Tiny Number of Genes Creates the Complexities of Human Thought

The mind is what the brain does." So wrote Massachusetts Institute of Technology psychologist Steven Pinker in his celebrated 1997 book, How the Mind Works (1). Today, and in the wake of the ongoing genetics revolution, Pinker's former student Gary Marcus takes a stab at answering the lofty question, What do our minds owe to nature, and what to nurture? Until recently, we knew relatively little about how genes work and what they bring to the biological structures that underlie the mind. Marcus reminds us that now, 50 years after the discovery of the molecular structure of DNA, we are for the first time in a position to understand directly DNA's contribution to the mind. Marcus is a cognitive psychologist and is currently an associate professor in the department of psychology at New York University and director of New York University's infant language center. He understands genes and has researched his topic well, taking us on a complex journey in an entertaining and absorbing way. He does a particularly good job of framing the issues with crystal clarity and making relevant scientific concepts accessible to even the lay reader without diluting his logic or the power of the story for more knowledgeable readers. Marcus explains how the emerging picture of nature's role in the formation of the mind is at odds with a conventional view that suggests a much more limited role for genes. He describes two key arguments that provide the basis for this view. The first is Stanford...