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Design for a Life (Hardcover)

by Patrick Bateson (Author), Paul Martin (Author)

4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)

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Product details

Hardcover: 280 pages
Publisher: Jonathan Cape Ltd (2 Sep 1999)
Language English
ISBN-10: 0224050648
ISBN-13: 978-0224050647

Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)

Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 214,517 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Popular in these categories:

#56 in	Books > Health, Family & Lifestyle > Psychology & Psychiatry > Schools of Thought > Behavioural Theory
#72 in	Books > Health, Family & Lifestyle > Psychology & Psychiatry > Schools of Thought > Evolutionary Psychology

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Product Description

Amazon.co.uk Review

Setting nature up in opposition to nurture makes for great headlines: remember the recent tabloid announcement that the gene for "genius" had been discovered? But the assumption that human qualities must be either innate or acquired makes for confusing debate and downright bad science.

Bateson and Martin set out to explain the "real" picture--and it's one of mind-boggling complexity. If genes equip people with particular personalities, then we are jukeboxes stuffed to bursting with alternative selves just waiting for the right environmental factors for them to flourish. Genes are but the simple rules to life's complex and unpredictable chess-game.

And unpredictable it certainly is. Sometimes, identical twins behave more like each other when they are brought up apart. Genetically linked differences in behaviour can stand out like sore thumbs in one environment, disappear in another. The order in which siblings are born may be the most important influence on their subsequent development.

But if the picture seems confusing, luckily the authors have had the wisdom and imagination to illustrate their account with literary quotations and references that add tremendously to the reader's understanding. After all, they are talking about the same things: that dizzying mix of inherited behaviours and life experiences that we call human character.

Rarely has complex material been rendered so accessible and in so natural and mature a fashion. --Simon Ings

Product Description

This work aims to explain the science of behavioural development, the biological and psychological processes that build an adult from a fertilized egg. It also explores the developmental cooking processes that give rise rise to individuals and considers in turn how these processes have evolved.

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Customer Reviews

2 Reviews

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Average Customer Review

4.5 out of 5 stars (2 customer reviews)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Absolutely Brilliant!!!, 12 Jun 2001

By	"mr_shahbazian" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Design for a Life: How Behaviour Develops (Paperback)

"Design for a Life" looks at the process of development throughout our lifetime, using Shakespeare's Seven Ages as a template. Patrick Bateson and Paul Martin show how our environment and genes interact to produce our personality and behaviour. They also add an eighth age of our pre-natal experience, discussing, amongst other things, the Thrifty Phenotype Hypothesis. This suggests that, in harsh environments, pregnant mothers will give birth to smaller babies, whereas in more affluent times they will give birth to larger babies, by way of hormonal signalling. This would be an adaptive response to the scarcity or abundance of resources. Bateson and Martin discuss this as a hypothesis and not an absolute certainty, which makes this book very refreshing reading.

They also show that instinct and learning are not so easy to distinguish - some learned behaviours, like birdsong, change little over the animal's lifetime, whilst some instincts can be refined by learning.

This is a very open minded book and doesn't hide that this is a complex subject with much that we don't know. It is also very, very well written and not at all technical. I found myself near the end in no time, wishing there was much more. I can't recommend this book enough.

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0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Biology and pschology for beginners., 8 April 2003

By A Customer

True to it's inside cover claims, this book is a clearly written explanation of 'what makes a life', combining knowledge from the (normally opposed) fields of biology and psychology. Relevant to a range of study fields, i found this book an informative, easy and sometimes humourous read (practical examples given) - something i would not have expected from a book used for study.

Use it as the only excuse you'll get to read a good book whilst doing research!

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