Do our genes determine our behavior? Do humans occupy a unique position in evolution? To clarify these provoking questions, the author takes the reader on an ambitious and entertaining journey through a variety of scientific disciplines. In doing so, he creates an image of human evolution that argues that our entire individual knowledge is determined - to the smallest detail - by phylogeny. A provoking and controversial analysis of the theory of our inability to learn something new and of the extent to which our behavior is determined by our genes.

InhaltsangabeNature Explains Nurture.- 1 The Myth of a Wonder of Nature.- 2 Evolutionary Epistemology or the Difficulties of Getting Started.- 3 To Be or Not to Be.- 4 Chance as Necessity.- 5 The Indivisible Individual.- 6 L=C.- 7 The Central Dogma Reformulated.- 8 Learning: Appearances are Deceptive.- 9 Edelman's Errors.- 10 On the Heritability of Jazzophilia.- 11 A Superfluous Law of Evolution.- 12 The "Wonder" of Language.- 13 Intelligent Sex: A Cognitivist View of Genetic Exchange Processes.- 14 How to Explain Consciousness.- 15 The True Nature of Scientific Revolutions.- 16 "Evolution Has Us in Its Grip".- 17 The Survival of the Most Intelligent.- 18 The Cultural Struggle of Genes.- 19 Requiem for a Wonder of Nature.- Literature.- Acknowledgement of sources.