Long Live the Gene
In taking a look at Kostas Kampourakis' book Understanding Genes, an attempted deconstruction of the gene concept, we peak into how genetic science stokes the proverbial debate about human nature.
Scientists, academics, politicos, pundits, and activists are perpetually locked in a debate about the relative importance of nature and nurture to individual and social behavior and outcomes. Certain subjects related to this broader debate have almost risen to taboo status in polite society, including the genetics of intelligence, sex differences, and ancestry-related differences. Generally, these are not arguments that a lot of people are party to. Everyday Americans are understandably uninterested or blissfully unaware of these impassioned and high stakes intellectual battles. Nonetheless, they play out with fervor in academic journals, long-form science journalism, and social media. Although possibly overstated, it is hard to identify another essentially scientific question that divides intellectuals and elites more starkly.
This debate falls roughly into two camps, reflecting the dichotomized question. Interestingly, where one falls on this question tends to correlate (though imperfectly) with one’s political identity, where the right favors biological explanations and the left favors more environmental and sociological explanations. The unfortunate political overlay likely contributes to the intensity of the overall debate, though it is understandable that thinkers are passionate about this issue since it is the central question concerning human nature. Given the stakes, neither side is above hardball tactics and are quick to try and use language to marginalize their opponents. The pro-nature side has been given various labels often with derogatory flavor: hyper-adaptationists, bioessentialists, genetic determinists, hereditarians, eugenicists, racists, etc. The pro-nurture side has been provided numerous epithets as well: social constructionists, environmentalists, behaviorists, blank slatists, Lysenkoists, dualists, etc. Some of these labels are more charged than others, but I list them to help orient readers who are less familiar with the stakeholders and to highlight that much of this debate is wasted on trying to label or mislabel ideas instead of pursue the truth or enlighten the public. And despite all the poor behavior in this discourse space, there is still a lot of rigorous, high quality scientific research that is produced that continues to provide more insight on human nature and the factors that guide social organization.
Although many of the scholars that study these questions are keen to point out that much of the nature versus nurture fracas is driven by the false dichotomy of this framing, the orientation and methodologies of certain disciplines inevitably favor one side over another. This isn’t necessarily a function of bias or a problem with methods. It is just that certain approaches and study designs can answer certain questions better than others. For instance, sociologists are wont to evaluate the explanatory power of existing social factors for whatever outcome is of interest - say trying to connect childhood poverty to achievement or income gaps. Genetics, of course, is often casually viewed as the core partisan of the nature side. This is because the field’s methods are geared toward understanding how changes in DNA sequences (i.e. genotypes) lead to changes in organismal traits (i.e. phenotypes). I am speaking to the layman’s perceptions here as within geneticists themselves there are of course disagreements. Later in this piece, I’ll highlight geneticists who themselves try a rebel against the discipline’s tendency to discuss genetic effects as deterministic or even as partially deterministic. However, the casual impression has at least some accuracy to it and is especially true of those who have sought to leverage ideas from genetics and evolutionary theory to answer questions about behavior and social organization (e.g. sociobiology, evolutionary psychology, and behavioral genetics/sociogenomics). A future issue to watch will be when traditional geneticists (those studying basic biological or medical questions) merge with the cross-disciplinarians. This is happening rapidly right now, especially in genomic research on psychiatric and neurodevelopmental traits.
So considering the context of the long-standing argument about human nature, I’d like to review a recent science book called Understanding Genes that aims to be a primer on genetic science for lay readers. The work is authored by Kostas Kampourakis, who is a biology instructor at the University of Geneva. In evaluating his published research and writings, it is evident that he fits neatly on the anti-nature side of the binary. This may be surprising to some, but to those familiar with the intellectual trends in science education and the philosophy of biology, this is a more prominent view than more aggressively pro-nature positions. A lot of Kampourakis’ ideas are informed by the work of a well-known and wildly left-wing geneticist named Richard Lewontin. I have some critical thoughts on the work, which isn’t because I am an unabashed pro-nature partisan. Of course, I do think there is powerful and persuasive evidence for biological and genetic explanations of a lot of human traits and phenomena, but I prefer a balanced and nuanced approach that defers to the most accurate and parsimonious interpretations of the empirical records. I also recognize that many biological and environmental explanations are bound up in each other, and in many cases partitioning them completely is not feasible. Thus, much uncertainty still remains. In other words, I am open to be persuaded by high quality science. However, it appears those like Kampourakis do not function this way and despite offering incisive critiques of genetic determinism, they often misrepresent the true power of genetic science or play semantic games.
Instead of delivering the foundations of genetics and commentary on the takeaways from genetics for society, Understanding Genes is a meandering work that is overeager to repetitively and superficially downplay the importance and power of genetics. Kampourakis wants to desperately do away with the tendency to associate genes with organismal traits, i.e. the “genes for” language that is often used colloquially. However, Kampourakis’ anxiety about simplifications, misperceptions, and misunderstandings of genetics distract from what an actual primer on genetics and its social importance should do. The real takeaway for lay readers should be that inherited genetic variation does have a significant impact on the traits of organisms along with the variations and their contribution to fitness in a population and ecological niche. Regardless of environments (though variant effects may often vary contextually), genotypes will influence phenotype, sorting out exactly how and to what extent is the purview of genetics. Kampourakis’ writing often intimates that there is some big ambiguous mystery when it comes to causally linking genetic variation to organismal phenotypes because of the complexity of biological systems. But he does this without actually exploring what processes create this ambiguity and how reductive approach may resolve it. He does gesture to and hint at developmental processes, dynamic environments, and stochastic processes but fails to explore them with any depth.
Understanding Genes is part basic (though abbreviated) genetics textbook and part philosophical polemic against supposed genetic essentialism/determinism and genetic reductionism (and seemingly reductionism broadly, which is weird to criticize given that to some extent all science relies on reductionist approaches). Kampourakis invests little to no effort in actually identifying merchants of genetic essentialism, claiming it just is out in the ether of the public consciousness. In fact, it seems largely that Kampourakis has erected a strawman to burn down instead of dealing with more nuanced objections to his claims. Most of the implied targets of his criticism (e.g E. O. Wilson, Richard Dawkins, Richard Plomin) have more sophisticated understandings of genetics, largely accounting for criticisms like his or those of his ilk (i.e. Lewontin). Plus, his complaints are basically a form of quasi-poststructural semantic nitpicking. Kampourakis decries metaphorical language used to simplify genetics for lay audiences, arguing it compels essentialist and reductionist understandings. This may indeed occur in the minds of those untutored in genetics, but of what consequence is this purported misunderstanding? In reality, these metaphors are meant to impress the importance of inheriting a genome with allelic variation - the foundational instructions for building a body and brain that will differ from others - especially in the very stable and enriched environments of OECD/WEIRD societies, and the rough continuity of our genome with that of all life on earth. I make this latter point because it means we are often subject to the same physiological and behavioral constraints that other organisms are. For example, if our nearest ancestors are 99.9% genetically similar to us and exhibit sexually dimorphism and construct dominance hierarchies, when those same phenomena manifest with us, it is parsimonious to attribute them to our evolved biology.
In addition to the amateurish, over-fastidious genetic philosophizing (mostly about lay rhetoric on the gene concept), Kampourakis stumbles into endorsements of wacky or decidedly heterodox scientific opinions, including but not limited to denigrating the clinical value of genetic testing, muddling the value of Mendelian genetics (Mendelian variants likely affect ~7% of world population significantly), and asserting the superiority of tissue organization field theory (TOFT) over somatic mutation/cancer hallmark theory as a model of carcinogenesis. The last endorsement seems the wildest given that numerous clinically effective therapeutic and prognostic modalities in oncology are predicated on somatic mutation theory and regularly prolong or save lives.
Fortunately, Kampourakis is quite careful and accurate about his description of molecular genetics. Moreover, he doesn't denigrate the power of genome-wide association studies (GWAS) and polygenic risk scores (PRS), though of course avidly provides the boilerplate caveats and criticisms of the approach. However, Kampourakis' book largely ignores evolutionary theory (he does have another book on evolution, but I'm not sanguine about its quality or the accuracy of its claims given this work), and how it underscores the importance of genes. I worry he avoids evolution because it allows him to avoid confronting the prodigious importance of genes (all of life is linked via the gene concept instantiated as a functional entity on the molecular substrate of polymerized nucleic acids).
Overall, as a geneticist by training, I cannot countenance a butchering of the importance and value of the gene concept or the clinical and sociocultural utility of understanding genetic variation. Yes, at this moment in time, genetic science doesn't have complete mechanisms for the generation of complex traits or the entire recapitulation of complex biological organisms, and yes, proteins, other non-gene components, randomness, and environments are critical to shaping organisms, but the predictive and clinical utility of many gene variants has already been demonstrated for medical and behavioral traits. Progress in the field will only continue, and lay audience are perfectly capable of dealing with the ideas and findings of genetics. The specter of early 20th century eugenics isn’t imminent or re-materializing. Ultimately, this work doesn't illuminate genetic science or provide a reasonable picture of the real-world impact of the findings of genetic science, which the public deserves. There are many superior topical alternatives to this book. I’d recommend Matt Ridley’s Genome, Siddhartha Mukherjee’s The Gene, Robert Plomin’s Blueprint, and Kathryn Paige Harden’s The Genetic Lottery instead of Understanding Genes. Hopefully, a more balanced, thoughtful, and accurate nature vs nurture conversation evolves in our public discourse.