July 23rd, 2010 by Mel Konner
It’s not creation, but it’s a technical achievement full of promise.
To say that Craig Venter’s latest contribution is garnering hype would be one of the understatements of the year. The paper, whose title begins “Creation of a Bacterial Cell…” was published in the print version of Science on July 2—Daniel Gibson was the first of many authors, Venter the last—but it had already appeared online on May 20 and generated a lot of comment, not least of all by Venter himself. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Add new tag, bacteria, bioethics, creation of life, genetics, genomics, reprogramming life, science and religion, synthetic life
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June 19th, 2010 by Mel Konner
Some thoughtful comments, and some attempted answers.
The comments on my last posting, “We Can’t All Be Mozart,” were so thoughtful and interesting that I decided to post another blog on this. To my general claim that innate talent matters, I opposed a fact close to home that seems to contradict it: I have two grown daughters, Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Add new tag, behavior genetics, genes, genetics, talent
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May 31st, 2010 by Mel Konner
Genius may be 90 percent perspiration, but it helps to have the right starting point.
A comment by Jack Davis on my last blog entry leads me to write something about talent, genes, environment, and how we succeed. Jack asks about a new book by David Shenk, The Genius in All of Us: Why Everything You’ve Been Told About Genetics, Talent, and IQ Is Wrong. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: behavioral genetics, genes, genetics, genius, human nature, nature vs. nurture, talent
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May 24th, 2010 by Mel Konner
Can genes explain brain disorders? Yes. Sometimes.
Over the past few weeks two articles have shown the promise and the difficulty of studying brain genes. One appears in the New England Journal of Medicine of May 20, and zeroes in magnificently on a gene for Tourette’s Syndrome. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: brain, brain disorders, disease, genes, genetics, genomics, molecular genetics, multiple sclerosis, Tourette's syndrome, twin studies
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March 11th, 2010 by Mel Konner
Is Barack Obama an evolutionary psychologist?
Since I criticized President Obama’s speech last year in Cairo (and even “rewrote” it) and later pointed out the names and deeds of those who did not get the Nobel Peace Prize because he did, I think it’s only fair that I resume this blog after a long hiatus by writing about his Nobel Prize acceptance speech in December.
I have to say that it stunned me. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Darwinian views of violence, evolutionary psychology, human nature, Nobel Peace Prize, Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Obama, Oslo, peace, sociobiology, violence, war
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November 29th, 2009 by Mel Konner
My friend and colleague Alice Schaerr Rossi, a co-founder of the National Organization for Women and one of the leading sociologists of her generation, died on November 3 at age 87.
For a few years in the ‘70s and ‘80s, I worked with her and Jane Lancaster, a distinguished anthropologist now at the University of New Mexico and editor of the journal Human Nature, on a committee of the Social Science Research Council, and both of them affected my thinking about gender. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Alice Rossi, difference feminism, gender, menstrual cycle and mood, mothers, parenting, Sex differences
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November 15th, 2009 by Mel Konner
A couple of weeks ago I posted some musings about “the self” in anticipation of being on a panel with Steven Pinker (author of The Blank Slate and The Stuff of Thought) and Noga Arikha (author of Passions and Tempers: A History of the Humours) at Tufts University. The panel, convened by Jonathan Wilson, was titled “The New Biology and the Self,” and what follows was my contribution. The graduate student referred to is Monica Chau of Emory University.
I told a very smart neurobiology graduate student named Monica yesterday that I’d been asked to speak on “The New Biology and the Self.” She said, “What’s the new biology?” I said, “I don’t know, but that’s the least of my problems. What’s the self?” Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: bioethics, brain, brain imaging, enhancement drugs, evolution, evolutionary psychology, genes, genomics, human nature, philosophy, sociobiology, the self
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November 8th, 2009 by Mel Konner
Thank goodness for a brave woman with character to spare
Five feet and four inches of pure skill and courage, Kimberly Denise Munley, at lunchtime Thursday, saved an unknown but large number of people from injury and death. She did it by running straight toward a terrorist armed with two guns blazing at her and she kept walking into that deadly barrage until both of them fell with serious wounds. Around them were the bodies of the twelve people the terrorist had murdered and at least thirty he had injured—one, it turned out, also fatally. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Fort Hood, gender, heroes, heroism, human nature, Kimberly Munley, terrorism, violence, women's roles
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November 2nd, 2009 by Mel Konner
And assuming we can answer that, how is science changing it?
Big philosophical concepts bother me, but I am expected later this week at Tufts University, where I’ll be on a panel discussing “The New Biology and the Self.” So I need to get over my reluctance to talk about the self. And it’s not the only big idea that gives me trouble.
Consciousness and free will are two other notions Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: brain imaging, consciousness, enhancement drugs, free will, genes, human nature, personal genomics, philosophy, the self
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October 26th, 2009 by Mel Konner
In breast cancer, promising approaches of twenty years ago are still…promising.
Today I talked about breast cancer to an audience already energized about Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Among other things, I told them that diseases need lobbies, and that breast cancer has one, having learned from the AIDS awareness movement, which in a momentous few years in the 1980s turned our country toward committed prevention.
But in breast cancer, science has made limited progress Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: breast cancer, cancer, disease, health, medical progress, science
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