Comments on: Genes are Overrated

By: marie

marie — Thu, 07 Jun 2012 19:45:27 +0000

i can do it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

By: Carol

Carol — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 13:22:16 +0000

(What else am I reading?)
There is an interesting new book about how the human nervous system responds to music, written by the daughter of the founder of the Mannes School of Music. One chapter talks about the surprising fact that music triggers more responses throughout the brain than any other activity. It discusses research about response to music (babies can recognize musical intervals e.g.) and provides a hint of how cultural influences shape one to respond to western or other music forms. I am in the middle of reading the book right now and am finding it to be interesting and provocative.
Carol

“The power of music : pioneering discoveries in the new science of song” / Elena Mannes

By: djcoyle

djcoyle — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 11:43:54 +0000

Hi Carol,
Well, that completely makes my day! Thanks for the kind words — and good luck with the cello. I’ll check out the blog. What else are you reading/finding that’s useful? Best, Dan

By: Carol

Carol — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 14:18:06 +0000

So much of what you say in your book, “The Talent Code” rings true. I’m a trained biologist, a retired teacher of biology, and for the last 9 years I have been working to learn the cello. I want to thank you for summarizing so succinctly how motivation, effective practice, and master teaching are involved in the learning process. You inspired me to write about the process on my blog about learning the cello. I’ve highly recommended your book to my teacher (my coach) and to my friends who are learning instruments like the cello as adults.

By: djcoyle

djcoyle — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 13:50:55 +0000

Great points. The original studies (which date back to the fifties) used surveys. They basically walked up to people and checked if they could do it. In retrospect, it seems sort of crazy — like surveying people for playing violin and concluding, therefore, that a certain percentage of people have violin gene. Which speaks to your second point: the set of cultural assumptions we’ve had about talent is incredibly strong. We get told that story, over and over and over, in books/movies, by parents/teachers, until it’s like this unbreakable habit, built into our language and our ways of thinking about ourselves. The question is, what are the best ways to break that habit?

By: liz garnett

liz garnett — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 13:42:18 +0000

Two things strike me here.

One is the question raised by your main point: how do people determine when something behavioural is genetic rather than learned? Establishing the heritability of physical characteristics is methodologically easy enough to understand, but the people who came up with the assertion that only 80% of us have the gene to roll our tongues – how did they come to that conclusion?

The second is how little we question the knowledge we acquire in childhood compared to how much we question knowledge we acquire in adulthood. If somebody tells you something like your tongue-rolling factoid in the pub, you immediately say, ‘Oh yeah? What’s your evidence?’ But stuff that your primary school teacher told you with just as little substantiation, you just carry on believing until something in adulthood makes you stop and, think, ‘Hang on, what exactly did she know about that anyway?’ And it’s a real shock to the system when you realise stuff you’ve always assumed was true might be nonsense.