DEVELOPMENT AND FATE

D

evelopment is usually considered to be the means by which poten-

tial becomes realized. It tends to be described, more formally,

as growth combined with diff erentiation, or increase in numbers of

diff er ent components like tissues and organs. Informally, it strikes nearly

every one as a wonderful, but mysterious, transformative pro cess in which

an insignifi cant speck of matter becomes a coherent, functional being so

automatically that it appears to be magic. Development seems so self-

fulfi lling that it is all too easy to imagine the homunculus with all its

potential already there, inside that speck, either in material form or in

code.

Th at popu lar impression has, indeed, been encouraged by leading

scientists. “Development,” said leading evolutionist Ernst Mayr, consists

of “the decoding of the programmed information contained in the DNA

code of the fertilized zygote.” So it is hardly surprising when newspapers

tell their readers: “At the moment that a sperm penetrates an egg, that

single- cell zygote... is pure potential... it has in it the fi nicky instruc-

tional manual that will direct the building of the body’s every fi ber.”^1

Again that message is the ideological mix of hope with fatalism, ori-

enting parents and childcare givers not to what might be, but to making

the best of what fate delivers. Little won der that parents start to worry

about their child’s potential almost as soon as conception, especially with

regard to the child’s future intelligence. Th inking that they might be

constrained by a predetermined plan, they are concerned about how to

5. INTELLIGENT DEVELOPMENT

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