Book Reviews

Human Growth: Assessment and Inter-pretation. By Alex Roche and ShumeiSun. xii + 311 pp. Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press. 2003. $85.00 (cloth).

The pace of publication of major new textson human growth and development hasincreased in the past few years. New knowl-edge about the determinants of humangrowth and new ways to apply this knowl-edge (e.g., in demography, in economic his-tory, in evolution theory) have revitalizedthe field. For decades, Cambridge UniversityPress has been a leading publisher in the areaof human growth and development. TheCambridge growth library includes majorworks on the history of growth research(Tanner, 1981), theoretical foundations, evo-lutionary and anthropological perspectives(Bogin, 1999; Ulijaszek et al., 1998), and adatabase of worldwide variation in growth(Eveleth and Tanner, 1976, 1990). This newbook by Alex Roche and Shumei Sun (neeGuo) adds a useful reference work on medicalapplications to the Cambridge collection.

The book is organized into five chaptersdesigned to cover topics ‘‘ . . . relevant to theaccurate assessment and interpretation ofhuman growth and maturation, which arecentral to pediatric practice and public healthpolicies relating to children’’ (p. ix). The firstchapter covers anthropometric equipmentand its use, as well as methods for matura-tional assessment. The nature of growthcharts and the criteria for constructing appro-priate charts are also given. This chapterincludes several of the more widely usedgrowth charts in pediatric practice. Chapter 2is a concise and clearly presented overviewof mathematical techniques for modelinggrowth patterns. Mathematical models forthe analysis of body weight, length/stature,head circumference, and body mass index(BMI) are emphasized. Models for changes inbody composition, for saltations and mini-spurts in growth, seasonal variation, failure-to-thrive, catch-up growth, and prediction ofadult stature are also treated. The topics ofgrowth tracking and decanalization are pre-sented. Chapter 3 considers factors that influ-ence growth, including genetic and familyfactors, hormones, substance abuse by preg-nant women, breastfeeding, ethnicity, nutri-tion, and high altitude. Chapter 4 describes

secular changes in growth and maturity.Chapter 5 reiterates much of the material inChapters 1 and 2, but with a bit more empha-sis on ‘‘ . . . the significance of child growthand maturity in relation to future size, func-tion, and disease’’ (p. x).

This book is a reference work for advancedstudents and professionals in medical fields.The topics of the five chapters are presentedin a descriptive and matter-of-fact fashion.Readers of the book who want a quick intro-duction to a topic should find this format use-ful. The authors usually provide four recentreferences (since 1990) to support any state-ment of fact and to give readers an entree tothe literature. Older references (from the1950s–1970s) are provided when there areno recent publications or when the topicrelates to a special interest of the authors.There is little concern with the history ofstudy of any topic and there is scant consid-eration of the theoretical or biological reasonswhy growth and maturation should operate asthey do. For this information readers willneed to consult other sources, such as thebooks cited in this review.

The literature reviewed by Roche and Sun isconfined to what the authors call the ‘‘devel-oped countries,’’ meaning Canada, the UnitedStates, Japan, Australia, and the nations ofEurope. In a handful of instances, however,the authors cite a study from a ‘‘lesser devel-oped’’ country when it illustrates a point. It isimpossible to systematically review the entireworld literature on growth. But, to restrictcoverage to the most economically and polit-ically dominant nations greatly reduces theusefulness of this book. The children of thewealthy nations grow and mature within afairly narrow range of conditions for healthand disease. To be sure, there are difficultconditions for growth and development forsome groups, and many individuals, in therich countries, but nothing on the scalefound elsewhere in the world.

Pediatricians and public health research-ers (the target audience of this book) need abroad education in the total range of varia-tion of human growth and maturation. Suchknowledge is of immediate practical import-ance. Migration from the poorer nations tothe richer nations is the leading demo-graphic force at work today (Bogin, 2001).Migration, including adoptions of infants,brings millions of young people into theworld of medical professionals of the richernations. Migrants carry the diseases of their

� 2003 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

AMERICAN JOURNAL OF HUMAN BIOLOGY 16:97–105 (2004)

country of origin with them, and they con-tract the new diseases of the host country.Pediatricians and public health works mustbe prepared to deal with the health, emo-tional, social, economic, and even politicalramifications of these population move-ments. Given this, it is curious that thetopics of migration and adoption of foreign-born children seem to be confined to onesentence, and only two references, in thisbook. There is no discussion of the adoptionof children born within the wealthy nations,who are known to have special patterns ofgrowth and maturation.

Chapters 1 and 2 seem to provide the bestinformation. I have already referred one col-league, working on the mathematical analy-sis of longitudinal patterns of infant growth,to Chapter 2. I am especially impressed withthe thoughtful and practical approach thatthe authors take to the construction ofgrowth models. Readers are advised to firstlook at the distribution of the raw data, andthen find a model that best fits the data. Thisis a refreshing approach, as too often a pre-ferred model is forced on the data. The dis-cussion of growth tracking is good, but theclinical applications of tracking published byKowalski, Schneiderman, and colleagues,using sophisticated statistical methods, arenot cited (e.g., Furey et al., 1994).

Chapter 3 provides a prodigious amount ofdescriptive material on factors influencinggrowth. There is a lot of good discussion onthe role of genes, hormones, substance abuse,breastfeeding, and maturity on growth. Thetopic of ‘‘Ethnicity’’ is given three pages,which seems brief given the amount of medi-cal and public health research activity in thisarea. Nutritional influences are covered wellenough, except for the mineral iron. Iron defi-ciency anemia is the most common single-nutrient problem in the world, including thedeveloped nations, but this is not mentionedin the book and only one 1986 reference toiron and growth is provided. The effect ofindustrial pollutants, such as lead, is not men-tioned, which is surprising in a book thatrestricts its coverage to growth in the mostindustrialized nations. There is discussion oftelevision viewing in relation to the epidemicof overweight (but no entry for ‘‘television’’ inthe Index). The authors cite studies that findlittle or no relationship. This seems odd, asthere are many well-constructed studies thatshow a positive relationship between body fat-ness and TV viewing.

Chapter 4 is devoted to secular changes ingrowth. The presentation is almost entirelydescriptive; that is, what has happenedrather than why it happened. Perhaps thisis why the authors state on page 180 that it is‘‘somewhat surprising’’ that increases in sta-ture over time are often greater for theshortest groups (3rd percentile) than forthe tallest groups (97th percentile). Thereis abundant evidence that social, economic,and political changes that lead to improve-ments in the environment for growth willusually benefit the least well-off in anysociety. The authors also state that the‘‘ . . . absence of secular changes in weightfrom birth to 2 years is unexplained’’(p. 184). Birth weight and birth length are clas-sic examples of strong stabilizing selection,so these are in fact well explained. The sta-bility of weight until 2 years likely reflectsthe influence of stabilizing selection for birthweight combined with the relative insulationof the infant from external influences. Moreto the point would be a discussion of thecauses of secular changes in the percentageof low birth weight (LBW) infants. Theenvironmental factors responsible for secu-lar trends, which are cited on page 183, haveclear influences on LBW.

Overall, Roche and Sun’s book will serveas a practical reference for its intended audi-ence. Perhaps this new book will work best ifit is used to follow up on material presentedin a more basic overview of human growthand development. Some of the books alreadycited, as well as a recent edited text byCameron (2002), would be the best first readfor medical students, public health workers,and human biologists.

LITERATURE CITED

Bogin B. 1999. Patterns of human growth, 2nd ed.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Bogin B. 2001 The growth of humanity. New York:Wiley-Liss.

Cameron N. 2002. Human growth and development.New York: Academic Press.

Eveleth PB, Tanner JM. 1976. World-wide variation inhuman growth. Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress.

Eveleth PB, Tanner JM. 1990. World-wide variationin human growth, 2nd ed. Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press.

Furey AM, Kowalski CJ, Schneiderman ED, Willis SM.1994. GTRACK: a PC program for computingGoldstein’s growth constancy index and an alterna-tive measure of tracking. Int J Biomed Comput 36:311–318.

98 BOOK REVIEWS

Tanner JM. 1981. A history of the study of humangrowth. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Ulijaszek SJ, Johnston FE, Preece MA, editors. 1998.The Cambridge encyclopedia of human growth anddevelopment. Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress.

BARRY A. BOGIN

Department of Behavioral SciencesUniversity of Michigan, DearbornDearborn, MichiganDOI: 10.1002/ajhb.10221

Human Biology and History. Edited byMalcolm Smith. xiv + 219 pp. Londonand New York: Taylor and Francis. 2002.$88.00 (cloth).

The stated intent of this brief volume,edited by biological anthropologist MalcolmSmith, is to ‘‘exemplify the range of commoninterest and to illustrate the scope and poten-tial for interaction between the fields ofhuman biology and history,’’ a body of know-ledge which may be labeled ‘‘biological his-tory’’ (p. 1). This volume is the outcome ofa symposium held at University College,Durham (UK) under the auspices of theSociety for the Study of Human Biology onthis subject. The contributors to this volumerepresent individuals from such diverse fieldsas archeology, biological anthropology, biol-ogy, geography, and history who are unitedby their reliance on data associated with ear-lier (prehistoric or historic) populations. Thebook is organized into 10 chapters, includingthe brief and succinct introduction by Smith.

Chapter 2 by Landers is concerned withthe nature of interaction between economicand demographic variables. After discussingthe concept of adaptation from two different(Darwinian vs. Malthusian) perspectives andat two (macro vs. micro) levels, Landersapplies these paradigms to English demo-graphic data from the mid-1500s to themid-1800s. The outcome of this analysis isthat England’s demographic regime wasadaptive both in the Darwinian and in theMalthusian sense at the macrolevel but notnecessarily so at the microlevel.

A sociobiologically oriented Chapter 3 byBetzig relies on parish records, letters, dia-ries, magazines, and English literature toexplore polygyny in English society. Thisquite long treatment considers such aspectsof English life as household size and compo-

sition, fornication and adultery, whores andcourtesans, kings and pimps, general debau-chery, and the consequent cover-up in theform of hush money or other forms of eco-nomic favors, and includes the specifics con-cerning English royalty from William I toGeorge VI. I find Betzig’s invoking of demo-cracy and the loss of power by men as anexplanation for the ending of these practices,first in England and then elsewhere, to bequite creative but somewhat less than totallyconvincing. After all, these practices seem tooccur even in our time in ostensibly demo-cratic societies (see, for example, Anony-mous, 1996; Clinton, 2003).

Mielke, in an extremely well-focusedChapter 4, considers the impact of the 1808War of Finland on the population structureof the Aland Islands and how that impact, inturn, was influenced by the region’s popula-tion structure and sociocultural characteris-tics. The relevant demographic data utilizedin this analysis indicate rapid populationsize reduction due to high mortality ininfants, children, and elderly males, alongwith a decrease in marriages. The elevationin mortality resulted from diseases introducedby the Swedish troops sent to protect theAlanders and their subsequent rapid spreaddue to crowding and unfavorable hygienic con-ditions. Cox’s Proportional Hazards SurvivalModels are also applied to these data and indi-cate an interesting picture concerning survi-val during the course of the war as well asdifferences in the various islands which maybe attributable to differential exposure to dis-ease-carrying pathogens. An intriguing aspectof Mielke’s contribution are his speculationsabout the possible genetic implications of theobserved demographic changes which could beexamined in future work with the newlydeveloped techniques of molecular genetics.

Smith’s Chapter 5 on isonymy focuses onthe potential application of surname distri-bution measures, widely used in biologicalanthropology and, thus, based on genetics,to answer questions generated by historiansand their kinds of debates which are gene-tics-free in nature. This chapter describeshow historians already use surnames intheir work (e.g., geographic origin and dis-tribution; chronological and spatial distribu-tion to infer migration patterns, local stabilityand transience and lineage persistence) incomparison to biological anthropologists(consanguinity and its consequences). Afterdescribing such bio-anthropological measures

BOOK REVIEWS 99

as random and nonrandom F, repeated pairs,and kinship/relationship and the assump-tions behind these isonymic measures, theauthor applies the coefficient of relationshipby isonymy (Ri) to two case studies of occu-pational groups in order to explore theiroverall relationship and their temporalchange. Smith suggests that these techni-ques, originally developed for bio-anthropo-logical purposes, may also be meaningfullyapplied to historical questions and processes,including those at levels above the localcommunity.

Chapter 6 by Oddy focuses on food con-sumption and the estimation of nutritionalstatus in past populations from such histor-ical sources as, for example, family budgets,which began to be collected in Britain in the1780s. While the use of such sources for nutri-ent analysis is based on certain assumptionsand contains some shortcomings, the obtainedresults suggest marked regional variation infood consumption with only small variation inenergy values, a probable imbalance in within-family food consumption, and a long-termchange in the energy composition of Britishdiets from the 1790s to the 1930s.

Chapter 7 by Floud deals with the rela-tively recent approach whereby anthropo-metric (primarily stature) measurementsrecorded in historical sources are utilized inorder to gain insights into economic and his-torical processes. Stature has increased ona worldwide basis, but there has not beena uniform secular trend in this trait andthere were instances of stature decline. Thislatter event has generated a lively debateamong economists and historians concerningthe standard of living. Anthropometric mea-surements are subject to both genetic andcomplex environmental factors, and it isimpossible to assign a single cause to theobserved changes. Considerable challengesremain for future work to unravel the com-plexity of the situation.

The anthropologist, Bennike, considerspaleopathology as a means to investigatethe survival of six different historic popula-tions from three separate periods in Chapter 8.Neanderthals are compared with peoplefrom the Upper Paleolithic for the earliestperiod, Mesolithic hunter–gatherers withNeolithic agriculturalists for the second,and Inuits with the Norse for the third.Survival is defined here broadly to includenot only longevity but also various risks andtraumas experienced during life. While all

indicators favor the surviving anatomicallymodern humans in comparison to theNeanderthals, the differences between theMesolithic and Neolithic populations are lessclear-cut in the second period (12,000–6,000ago) under consideration. The eventual disap-pearance of the Norse from Greenland, thefocus of the third period (1,000–500 yearsago) comparison, may simply involve an out-migration strategy.

Knusel’s Chapter 9 treats the relativelyignored topic of activity-related bone altera-tion. He briefly discusses the reasons, intel-lectual as well as practical, for the lack ofinterest in this area and calls for a considera-tion of nongenetic causes to explain morpho-logical change. A few such investigationstreated the relationship between strenuousactivity and bone morphology in early humanevolution, but Knusel suggests that suchinvestigations could be profitably carried outto explore the major social transformations oflater prehistory, protohistory, and history.

Schutkowski, in an extremely interestinghuman ecology-focused Chapter 10, looks atthe skeletal record of a number of Germansettlements for heavy metal concentrations,strontium isotopes, and diet-indicating traceelement levels. He explores the occupationalhazards and the health conditions in 18thcentury smelters and their families throughthe accumulation of lead, cadmium, andarsenic in the skeleton. Additionally, resi-dential mobility in Black Forest miners isanalyzed by differences in strontium isotoperatios in skeletal and dental materials,whereas social class-related dietary differ-ences are explored on the basis of such meas-ures as stable isotope ratios of carbon andnitrogen, Sr/Ca and Ba/Ca ratios from theearly medieval settlements of Weingartenand Weinigumstadt.

Personally, I found some of the contribu-tions in this brief volume to be much moreinteresting than others and would have likedto see additional coverage of these particulartopics. This wish would have probablyslanted the focus of the work too much infavor of biological anthropology. Takentogether, the various contributions to thisvolume do provide a brief but meaningfulintroduction to biological history, and individ-uals, regardless of disciplinary affiliation,utilizing archival data in their research orcontemplating such will benefit from read-ing this work. Additionally, this work couldalso be used as a source for supplemental

100 BOOK REVIEWS

readings in some of the more narrowlyfocused courses on biological anthropology.Finally, I view the price of this volume($88.00 for only 219 pages) to be a bit onthe expensive side.

LITERATURE CITED

Anonymous. 1996. Primary colors: a novel of politics.New York: Random House.

Clinton HR. 2003. Living history. New York: Simon andSchuster.

TIBOR KOERTVELYESSY

Department of Sociology and AnthropologyOhio UniversityAthens, OhioDOI: 10.1002/ajhb.10222

The Biodemography of Human Repro-duction and Fertility. Edited by JosephLee Rodgers and Hans-Peter Kohler. xiv+ 258 pp. Boston: Kluwer AcademicPublishers. 2003. $145.00.

Biodemography is a sullied concept inanthropology. It ought to be about the biolo-gical and evolutionary basis of demographicevents that determine Darwinian fitness.Usually it is merely descriptive, and I havecome to expect that titles with biodemogra-phy in them will disappoint. This book is anice surprise: it has many pieces that do justwhat biodemography ought to do.

The strength of the book is that it is acollection of pieces (12 chapters) from differ-ent fields in anthropology, biology, epide-miology, psychology, and even sociology thatare not obviously related and tempts scholarsto read outside their fields. Anthropologists,for example, learn early on that phenotypicplasticity is what humans are about, and itnever occurred to me to question the assump-tion that phenotypic plasticity is a good thinguntil I read the second chapter of the book, byHughes, Burleson, and Rodd. Environmen-tally cued development may have costs notincurred by genes coding for canalized devel-opment. For example, there may be costs asso-ciated with information acquisition.

Most human reproductive ecology is basedon plastic responses to the food supply orenergy output, and we ought to be developingmodels that compare the costs of this kindof response to fixed responses. Valeggia and

Ellison in Chapter 5 use Ellison’s energy bal-ance model (see Ellison, 2001) to interpretdata on the duration of lactational amenor-rhea in the Toba of Northern Argentina.Unfortunately, the beauty of Ellison’s energybalance model is its weakness. It explains allthe data we have or ever will have on ovariansuppression. In this sense it is not a truescientific model since it is impossible tofalsify.

The Toba have breastfeeding patternssimilar to the !Kung Bushmen of SouthernAfrica. The !Kung are known for their longlactation periods and low fertility, and afterMelvin Konner and Carol Worthman’s land-mark piece in 1980 establishing the intenselactation patterns of !Kung and suppressedovarian activity, the 4-year-wide birth inter-vals of !Kung were attributed to lactationalsuppression. But the Toba have a surpris-ingly short period of lactational amenor-rhea—half of all lactating Toba womenhave resumed cycling by 9 months postpar-tum, illustrating that breastfeeding inten-sity is not solely responsible for variation inlactational amenorrhea. Since there are nocomparative data (Konner and Worthman’sdata were much less detailed), the piece doesnot elucidate the role of energetics, butValeggia and Ellison describe some plausiblephysiological mechanisms for a regulatoryrole of food on ovarian activity.

Some variation in the timing of life historyevents previously attributed to plasticity cannow be attributed to genetic variation. InChapter 9 James Murray and colleaguesdescribe differences in fertility amongHonduran men with different alleles at thedopamine D2 receptor gene (DRD2)/TaqI/site. DRD2/Taq1/A1þ men have earlier ageat reproduction and higher fertility thanDRD2/Taq1/A1– men. In the past, theyargue, the higher fertility of the DRD2/Taq1A1þ allele was balanced by higher mortalityin carriers that today produces excess morbid-ity. They summarize a large body of literatureabout genes with similar effects that may beresponsible for so-called diseases of modern-ization (e.g., hypertension).

Like all edited volumes, this book varies inquality. Because the statistical methods andthe theoretical content change with eachchapter, the book is unlikely to be suitablefor standard undergraduate courses. Under-graduates could grasp the conclusions, butnot where they came from, and there aretoo many statistical techniques and too

BOOK REVIEWS 101

much theory and biology to introduce in asemester. Anderson and Low in Chapter 4,for example, find that the higher fertility ofunmarried women disappears when covari-ates are included. This is an interesting butquestionable finding. Many of the covariates(like age at first birth, age at marriage, andschooling) are competing risks. Women whobecome pregnant young are less likely to bemarried and receive less schooling, and adifferent model incorporating interactionsamong these terms might produce a differ-ent answer.

There are many other pieces by prominentscholars on many issues. This book shouldgive readers a lot of new ideas with which toapproach their own research problems,including up-to-date literature reviews infields outside their own fields. It would be agreat choice for a journal-club-like course inwhich students and faculty can hash out theissues and the consequences of better data ordifferent statistical methods.

LITERATURE CITED

Ellison P. 2001. On fertile ground. Cambridge, MA:Harvard University Press.

Konner M, Worthman C. 1980. Nursing frequency, gona-dal function, and birth spacing among !Kung hunter-gatherers. Science 207:788–791.

RENEE PENNINGTON

Department of AnthropologyUniversity of UtahSalt Lake City, UtahDOI: 10.1002/ajhb.10223

Animal Social Complexity: Intelligence,Culture, and Individualized Societies.Edited by Franz B.M. de Waal andPeter L. Tyack. xvi + 616. Cambridge,MA: Harvard University Press. 2003.$49.95 (cloth).

Two ‘‘hot’’ topics form the central focus ofthis volume: 1) the role of the social environ-ment in the evolution of intelligence, and 2)the question of animal culture. The editorssuggest that these issues are best examinedin animal societies in which members recog-nize each other individually, build multigen-erational relationships, and possess learnedsocial and survival strategies. They introducethe volume with discussions of life historystrategies in primates (van Schaik and

Deaner, Chapter 1), dolphins (Wells, Chapter2), and elephants (Payne, Chapter 3). Theseand subsequent chapters on spotted hyenas(Drea and Frank, Chapter 5) and spermwhales (Mesnick et al., case study 6A) arguethat brain size and intelligence correlate withlife history strategies, including longevity, lit-ter size, gestation length, precocity at birth,and slow postnatal maturation. Accordingly,social intelligence and socially transmittedbehavioral traditions are predicted to differ-entially occur in species with long life spansand slow postnatal maturation rates.

This fine collection of works makes majorcontributions to our understandings of co-operation, intelligence, communication, andsocial learning in primates, elephants, ceta-ceans, sea lions, bats, and parrots. Chaptersby Boesch (Chapter 4), Schusterman et al.(Chapter 7), Seyfarth and Cheney (Chapter8), and de Waal (Chapter 9) also providemajor theoretical advances in our under-standing of what constitutes social intelli-gence and how to compare it across taxo-nomic groups. Seyfarth, Cheney, and deWaal’s emphases on the hierarchical natureof social intelligence, on the differentialawareness of triadic relationships by differentspecies, and on the similarities between behav-ioral and linguistic syntax are particularlywelcome. The evidence of vocal labeling behav-iors in captive chimpanzees also representsan important advance in our understandingof language-like capacities in great apes(Hallberg et al., case study 11A). Left un-resolved is the key issue of whether socialintelligence among some nonprimate taxasuch as sea lions, spotted hyenas, and ceta-ceans is equivalent to that of cercopithecoidprimates, as argued by Schusterman et al.(Chapter 7) and by Drea and Frank (Chapter5), but countered on theoretical bases by Enghand Holekamp (case study 5A), Seyfarth andCheney (Chapter 8), and de Waal (Chapter 9).

Overall, the volume’s contributions to ourunderstandings of mammalian intelligenceand to theoretical methods of analysis areso strong that it must be considered manda-tory reading by all investigators in the fieldsof comparative mammalian intelligence andbrain function. It is not clear, however, thatthe chapters as a group support the volume’smajor assumptions. Chapters by van Schaikand Deaner (Chapter 1) and by Wilkenson(Chapter 12), for example, question theassumption that brain size and intelligencerelate primarily to social complexity, noting

102 BOOK REVIEWS

instead relationships between brain sizes,intelligence, and foraging strategies. Otherchapters lend tacit support to these viewsby noting relationships between complexcommunication systems and feeding endea-vors in captive apes (Hallberg et al., casestudy 11A) and wild parrots (Bradbury,Chapter 11), between tool use and foragingendeavors in capuchins (Ottoni and Mannu,case study 16A) and between complex socialstrategies and cooperative foraging endea-vors in hyenas (Drea and Frank, Chapter5), cetaceans (Wells, Chapter 2), and pri-mates (Boesch, Chapter 4). Nor do the asser-tions by several volume contributors thatgreat ape and/or monkey social intelligenceexceeds that of long-lived, nonprimate taxaprovide confidence in the existence of astraightforward relationship between life-history strategies and cognitive capacities.

We turn then to the question of culture.Most contributors assume that the socialtransmission of information or behavioraltraits and culture are equivalent phenom-ena. None recognizes that many culturalanthropologists define culture in terms ofsymbolic systems of belief. Hence, while allcontributors appear to agree that most long-lived mammals have culture on the groundsthat most have socially transmitted tradi-tions, none examines the far more challen-ging question of whether any mammals havesymbolic systems. This trend to glorify sociallearning by calling it culture has become sofirmly entrenched among animal behavior-ists that as McGrew (Chapter 16, p. 436)states, the concept of culture has now escapedfrom anthropology. Anthropologists mustfind a word other than culture to refer to thevery real human phenomena of symbolicbeliefs.

However, even if we grant animal behav-iorists the right to define culture in theirown terms, a serious theoretical problemconfronts the reader of this volume. So cer-tain were the volume editors of a relation-ship between life history strategy and acapacity for socially transmitted behavioraltraditions that they included very few chap-ters focusing on the intellectual and sociallearning capacities of small-bodied, short-lived species, even though social learningwas first experimentally documented inrats and is now known to occur in manyshort-lived mammals (Box and Gibson,1999), including two short-lived taxa thatare included in the volume: bats (Wilkinson,

Chapter 12) and marmosets (Voelkl andHuber, case study 14A), as well as in manyshort-lived birds (West et al., Chapter 18). Inshort, although the volume contains manyfine discussions of the social learning capaci-ties of long-lived species, the selective natureof the material presented cannot be used toargue that such capacities are differentiallypresent in long-lived taxa, as the editors sug-gest.

LITERATURE CITED

Box HO, Gibson KR (eds.). 1999. Mammalian sociallearning: comparative and ecological perspectives.Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

KATHLEEN GIBSON

Department of Neurobiology and AnatomyUniversity of Texas Medical SchoolHouston, TexasDOI: 10.1002/ajhb.10224

What Genes Can’t Do. By Lenny Moss. xxii+ 228 pp. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press(A Bradford Book). 2002. $34.95 (cloth).

In this latest entry in the Basic BioethicsSeries from the MIT press, Lenny Moss offersa provocative critique of the pervasive ‘‘genecentered’’ view of development that has char-acterized much of the scientific and popularthinking over the last 50 years. Drawing onhis training as a cellular biologist and philo-sopher of science, the author charts thehistoric roots of widely held genetic miscon-ceptions and offers a convincing alternativeview that reinforces the emerging sense thatboth evolution and development reflect theoutcome of stunningly complex interactionsbetween molecular, cellular, and externalenvironments. Moss contends that nucleotidesequences provide only one source of essen-tial information and that independentdomains of information are contained on thechromosome as well as in the complex archi-tecture of the cell and its attendant receptorsand organelles. The text occasionally veersinto stretches of jargon-laden ‘‘deep’’ rhetoriccharacteristic of postmodern critiques ofscientific gospels, but Moss is no opponent ofempiricism. His goal is to present a ‘‘philoso-phically guided, empirically argued critique’’(p. xiii). The result is a short but thoughtful,densely documented text of five chapters that

BOOK REVIEWS 103

will be useful to anyone who pursues geneticresearch, has interest in development andevolution, or who attempts the unenviabletask of introducing students to the elegantcomplexity of life at these basic levels.

Moss begins Chapter 1, entitled ‘‘Genesisof the Gene,’’ with a review of the origins ofthe current concept of genes ‘‘as blueprintsfor traits’’ and argues that this misconcep-tion has arisen from the confluence of twolong-established philosophical trends in bio-logy. The first of these, ‘‘preformationism,’’assumes that the essence of developmentalpotential is somehow fully contained withinthe germ cell(s). Preformationism appears ingenetic theory when ‘‘genes’’ are perceivedas the direct source of phenotypic traits (seedshape, eye color, cystic fibrosis). Moss labelsthis view of the gene as ‘‘Gene-P.’’ He notesthat most biologists recognize ‘‘Gene-P’’ asnothing more than a convenient or utilitar-ian model for framing questions of heritabil-ity. Thus, there is no separate gene for blueeyes (no gene product that produces bluepigment) but rather a gene for dark pigmentthat for a variety of reasons is not expressedin the outer layer of the iris. The secondhistorical influence on modern views of thegene is the theory of epigenesis, in whichorder (and form) is established in a progres-sive step-by step fashion during the course ofdevelopment. This is expressed geneticallyin the concepts of DNA as a codebook forlife and DNA as the self-directing architectof adapted form. Moss labels this as ‘‘Gene-D’’ and suggests that it is consistent withstandard textbook depictions of DNA as thefundamental developmental resource togetherwith its intermediaries of RNA transcriptsand their resultant proteins. The result ofthe intertwining of these different historicalperspectives has been the creation of a gene-centered view of development (and evolution)that Moss believes misrepresents the import-ance of other sources of information andorder. Thus, nucleotides are an importantbut not sufficient resource in the orchestra-tion of development.

Chapter 2, ‘‘The Rhetoric of Life and theLife of Rhetoric,’’ explores the historicalroots of the metaphor of the genetic code.Moss takes exception with the view thatthis code is analogous to a language andargues that the metaphor and its supportingterms (translation, sense and nonsense,reading frame, dictionaries, and libraries)condition us to overstate the importance of

the molecular ‘‘word’’ (or gene) to the exclu-sion of the more important interactivedynamics of development (a dialogue inwhich, according to Moss, the context deter-mines the meaning of the genetic ‘‘word’’).Moss draws on the work of postmoderncritics of the rhetoric of science (and gene-tics), but he is careful to avoid their stridentdenial of any empirical perspective. Rather,he acknowledges the obvious fact that themodels and metaphors we impose on realitytend to simplify and limit our understandingof the true complexity of that reality.

The heart of this text can be found in thethird chapter, ‘‘A Critique of Pure (Genetic)Information,’’ where Moss explores the fas-cinating complexity of the cell and its rela-tionship to the interpretation, integration,modification, and expression of the informa-tion provided by DNA. Moss brings togethermuch of the revolutionary research from thepast two decades that has revealed the awe-some complexity of cellular architecture andits intimate relationship to the supposedlyinviolable DNA ‘‘locked away’’ inside thenucleus. Moss maintains that the cell’s mem-brane-based structure provides a source ofinformation that is independent of nuclearDNA and equally critical in the synthesis ofproteins (and hence the expression of traits).He notes, for example, that the signalsequence contained on the N-terminal end ofa protein is the first to be synthesized in theribosomal translational complex. However,further synthesis of the protein will ceaseunless and until this terminal sequencebecomes associated with a specific embeddedreceptor protein in the endoplasmic reticulummembrane. Thus, even the first proteinsynthesized in a developing embryo presup-poses the prior existence of such key recep-tors. In other words, the ovum, as the primalinherited cell, provides important ‘‘informa-tion’’ in the form of preexisting cellular struc-ture that is absolutely essential to theexpression of the genetic information pro-vided by fusion of the parental gametes. Hefurther speculates that acquired structuralalterations in these cellular structures mightbe propagated throughout the ontologicaldevelopment of an individual and then poten-tially passed to succeeding generations. Inaddition to membrane dynamics, Moss dis-cusses chromosome marking (methylation,imprinting) and steady state dynamics (emer-gent properties of order in complex systems)as sources of information that are parallel,

104 BOOK REVIEWS

mutually dependent, and equally importantto nuclear DNA in directing development.Moss refers to this view of developmentwhich is contingent on multiple resourcesrather than on a self-contained code script as‘‘developmental systems theory’’ (p. 115).

Moss utilizes developmental systems theoryto explore the etiology of cancer in Chapter 4,‘‘Dialectics of Disorder: Normalization andPathology as Process.’’ As in the previouschapters, he establishes the historical contextfor the prevailing ideology of ‘‘cancer genetics’’and then offers an alternative that is consider-ably less gene-centered. Moss is convincedthat an understanding of cancer, even thosewith well-established genetic links such asbreast and colon cancer, requires a broadapproach. He believes that researchers mustconsider the interactions of individual cellswithin and between cellular developmentalfields. He suggests that intricate feedbackexists between cells in these fields and theirencompassing environment. Moss sees celltransformation as the result of an ontologicalprocess in reverse, with the cell gradually los-ing its specificity and identity. The processmay be initiated by a somatic mutation butthe probability of the multiple mutationsnow known to be required for most suchtransformations is vanishingly small unlessother factors are involved. It is, Moss argues,only through a persistent disruption of thenormally stabilizing cellular communityaround the transforming cell that metastaticcancer arises. This perception of cancer trans-formation as one end of a continuum of loss ofcellular control (order) suggests to Moss that itmight be possible to manipulate the cellularfield and/or its surrounding environment tostop and even reverse the loss of cellular iden-tity in a cancer cell.

In the final chapter, ‘‘After the Gene,’’ Mossconsiders the phylogenetic implications of atruly epigenetic view of development andgene function. The author notes that the sur-prisingly limited number of ‘‘structural’’ genesidentified to date, together with the equallysurprising conservation of sequence specificityacross species as diverse as bacteria andhumans, suggests that the orthodox primacy

given to point mutations needs to be reexa-mined. Moss believes that the origins of evolu-tionary complexity (never precisely defined)stems not from the invention of novel genes,but rather through the creation of greaterflexibility in mechanisms of regulation andcontrol in transcription initiation, gene spli-cing, and posttranslation modification of pro-teins. In this view, it is the regulation andmodification of the timing and expression ofgene products that has been the chief focus ofselection (and allowed for the developmentof multicellular complexity). Further, it isthrough the agency of transposable elementsthat this modularization has occurred. Thus,what some consider ‘‘junk DNA’’ interposingitself between ‘‘coding sequences’’ or exons,Moss sees as evidence of the creation ofgreater situational flexibility in the utilizationof the genome. Moss also offers a highly spec-ulative but intriguing mechanism throughwhich stress (presumably played out at ademe or population level) could unlock thepotential for these transposable elements togenerate increased variation (unique mod-ules) in the germ line, hence allowing forrapid or punctuated evolution.

There is, in this final chapter, a glimpse ofa deeper agenda when Moss muses on thereemergence of the living organism ratherthan its molecular replicators as the properfocus for the study of ontogeny and evolu-tion. He concludes with the observation thatsuch a change in focus may move our under-standing of life from the ‘‘secular’’ to the‘‘sacred’’ (p. 198). Regardless of how onemight feel about such a loaded terminationsequence, this elegantly argued and richlydetailed work provides an opportunity forconstructive reassessment of much of thecurrent dogma in genetics, development,and evolution.

RICHARD E. WARD

Department of AnthropologyIndiana University-Purdue Universityat IndianapolisIndianapolis, IndianaDOI: 10.1002/ajhb.10225

BOOK REVIEWS 105