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In Reconstructing Biology: Genetics and Ecology in the New World Order (John
Wiley, $34.95, ISBN 0-471-10917-7), biologist John Vandermeer takes
another look at some of the Big Questions: racial difference, homosexuality, the
environment and so on. The trouble is that too often the answers come from
people who don’t know their genetics and biology. Very little, says Vandermeer,
can be attributed to underlying biological factors, such as “gay” genes. There
is no genetic explanation for blacks in the US doing worse on IQ tests than
whites. Likewise, a biological essentialist view of the
environment—whether it is that it is in the “nature” of humans to destroy
it or whether the mere presence of too many people will do the job just as
well—is taken for granted without any evidence. We are, and the world is,
what we make of ourselves and it.