For more books and arts coverage and to add your comments, visit newscientist.com/culturelab8 June 2013 | NewScientist | 49The Human Spark: The science of
human development by Jerome Kagan,
Basic Books, $28.99WHAT is it that
makes humans
special, that sets
our species apart
from all others?
It must be
something
connected with
intelligence – but what exactly?
People have asked these questions
for as long as we can remember.
Yet the more we understand
the minds of other animals,
the more elusive the answers to
these questions have become.
The latest person to take up
the challenge is Jerome Kagan,
a former professor at Harvard
University. And not content with
pinning down the “human spark”
in the title of his new book, he
then tries to explain what makes
each of us unique.
As a pioneer in the science
of developmental psychology,Being human
Kagan has an interesting angle.
A life spent investigating how a
fertilised egg develops into an
adult human being provides him
with a rich understanding of the
mind and how it differs from that
of our closest animal cousins.
Human and chimpanzee
infants behave in remarkably
similar ways for the first four
to six months, Kagan notes.
It is only during the second year
of life that we begin to diverge
profoundly. As the toddler’s
frontal lobes expand and the
connections between the brain
sites increase, the human starts
to develop the talents that set
our species apart. These include
“the ability to speak a symbolic
language, infer the thoughts and
feelings of others, understand
the meaning of a prohibited
action, and become conscious
of 0their own feelings, intentions
and actions”.
Becoming human, as Kagan
describes it, is a complex dance
of neurobiological changes andpsychological advances. All
newborns possess the potential
to develop the universal human
properties “inherent in their
genomes”. What makes each of us
individual is the unique backdrop
of genetics, epigenetics, and the
environment against which this
development plays out.
Kagan’s research highlighted
the role of temperament, which
he notes is underpinned by at
least 1500 genes, affording
huge individual variation. This
variation, in turn, influences the
way we respond to environmental
factors including family, social
class, culture and historical era.
But what of that human spark?
Kagan seems to locate it in a
quartet of qualities: language,
consciousness, inference and,
especially, morality. This is where
things start to get weird. He would
like you to believe that morality
is uniquely human, which, ofcourse, bolsters his argument.
Unfortunately, it also means he
has to deny that a rudimentary
morality has evolved in other
social animals whose survival
also depends on cooperation.
Instead, Kagan argues that
morality is a distinctive property
of our species, just as “fish do
not have lungs”. No mention of
evolution. So why are we moral,
then? “The unique biology of the
human brain motivates children
and adults to act in ways that
will allow them to arrive at thejudgement that they are a good
person.” That’s it?
Warming to his theme, Kagan
argues that in today’s world,
where traditional moral standards
have been eroded and replaced
by a belief in the value of wealth
and celebrity, it is increasingly
difficult to see oneself as a good
person. He thinks this mismatch
between our moral imperative
and Western culture helps explain
the “modern epidemic” of mental
illness. Unwittingly, we have
created an environment in which
the human spark is fading.
Some of Kagan’s ideas are even
more outlandish, surely none
more so than the assertion that
a declining interest in natural
sciences may be a consequence of
mothers becoming less sexually
mysterious than they once were.
More worryingly, he doesn’t seem
to believe that humans are subject
to the same forces of evolution
as other animals.
Nevertheless, Kagan grapples
manfully with the complexity
of what it means to be human,
and has a magnificent disregard
for orthodoxy – questioning
everything from attachment
theory to the belief that animal
emotions are comparable to
our own. As a result, The Human
Spark can be infuriating, but it is
never boring. n^“Unwittingly, we have
created an environment
in which the human spark
is fading”We diverge profoundly from our
chimp cousins only in our second yearPiotr MalecKi/Panosis it enough to say that our brain sets us apart from other species?
Kate Douglas is unconvinced13060_Op_Clab.indd 49 31/5/13 14:37:31