Genes, Brains, and Human Potential The Science and Ideology of Intelligence

10 PINNING DOWN POTENTIAL

and goes on, “ Th ere’s no debate that the DNA blueprint is a starting
point.” (Well, there is a debate, from many directions, as we shall see in
chapters 2 and 4).
Th is all- power ful gene chimes in with con temporary individualism,
and people are being urged to have their DNA sequenced in order to learn
who they “ really” are. Th ere is constant speculation about designer babies,
obtained through ge ne tic engineering, and of enhanced human intelligence
through gene editing. Meanwhile, sperm banks introduce more exclusion
criteria for supposed ge ne tic disorders in cognition (creating worries about
a new eugenics), and the Royal Society of London assures us that “ human
learning abilities vary, in the same way that human height and blood pres-
sure vary.”^11
Many seem to think, in fact, that it is the genome that actually devel-
ops, like an internal homunculus with a self- directing program of self-
realization, more or less assisted by the environment. So the genes are
idealized as “ little brains” with wide executive functions, as if they were
active commands and instructions for development, instead of the purely
passive templates for protein construction that they really are (as I shall
explain in chapter 4). In the statistical models used to estimate their ef-
fects, they are reduced to being in de pen dent charges, like the batteries in
a fl ashlight, that just add together to produce a more or less bright light.
In her book, Th e Ontogeny of Information, Susan Oyama described
how the gene has become institutionalized as a quasi- cognitive power, an
almost conscious agent. She sees such superstitious attributions as part
of a Western cultural tradition: “Just as traditional thought placed bio-
logical forms in the mind of God, so modern thought fi nds ways of
endowing the genes with ultimate formative power.”^12
Others have agreed that there may be something quasi- religious in the
con temporary vision of the gene. In 2001, Alex Mauron published an
article in the journal Science titled “Is the Genome the Secular Equivalent
of the Soul?” He described how a scriptural meta phor of an overarching,
controlling being has been attached to genes. Perhaps it is hardly surpris-
ing, therefore, that Bill Clinton described the laboratory sequencing of
the human genome as “learning the language in which God created life.”
Indeed, many biologists still refer to the genes as “Th e Book of Life.” I
have just read on the BBC website that “the genome is the instruction

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