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The Intelligent Genome by Adolf Heschl, Springer-Verlag, €39.95, ISBN 3540671668

ADOLF HESCHL trained as an ethologist and genetic epistemologist, which equipped him well for his position at the Konrad Lorenz Institute in Austria, the institute named for ethology’s founder. It doesn’t, however, make him a very clear communicator of scientific ideas.

Translated from the 1998 German original, The Intelligent Genome is desperately heavy going.

The thesis of the book, insofar as it is possible to detect it, is the unsurprising statement that humans, including their minds, are the products of evolutionary processes inscribed in their genomes. That human behaviour can…

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