Denis Alexander

Broschiertes Buch

Genes, Determinism and God

Beschreibung

Over the past centuries the pendulum has constantly swung between an emphasis on the role of either nature or nurture in shaping human destiny, a pendulum often energised by ideological considerations. In recent decades the flourishing of developmental biology, genomics, epigenetics and our increased understanding of neuronal plasticity have all helped to subvert such dichotomous notions. Nevertheless, the media still report the discovery of a gene 'for' this or that behaviour, and the field of behavioural genetics continues to extend its reach into the social sciences, reporting the heritability of such human traits as religiosity and political affiliation. There are many continuing challenges to notions of human freedom and moral responsibility, with consequent implications for social flourishing, the legal system and religious beliefs. In this book, Denis Alexander critically examines these challenges, concluding that genuine free will, often influenced by genetic variation, emerges from an integrated view of human personhood derived from contemporary biology.

Autor

Denis Alexander is the Emeritus Director of the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion, originally founded at St Edmund's College, Cambridge, where he is a Fellow. Dr Alexander was previously Chairman of the Molecular Immunology Programme and Head of the Laboratory of Lymphocyte Signalling and Development at The Babraham Institute, Cambridge. Prior to that he was at the Imperial Cancer Research Laboratories in London (now Cancer Research UK), and spent 15 years developing university departments and laboratories overseas, latterly as Associate Professor of Biochemistry in the Medical Faculty of the American University of Beirut, Lebanon. There he helped to establish the National Unit of Human Genetics. He was initially an Open Scholar at Oxford reading Biochemistry, before obtaining a PhD in Neurochemistry at the Institute of Psychiatry in London. Dr Alexander writes, lectures and broadcasts widely in the field of science and religion. From 1992 to 2013 he was Editor of the journal Science & Christian Belief and currently serves as a member of the executive committee of the International Society for Science and Religion. His Creation or Evolution: do we have to choose? proved particularly popular. He gave the Gifford Lectures at St Andrews University in 2012 and these were published by CUP in 2017 under the title Genes, Determinism and God. In April 2018 Monarch published his Is There Purpose in Biology?

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Cambridge University Press
• Seitenzahl: 394
• Erscheinungstermin: 29. März 2019
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 229mm x 152mm x 23mm
• Gewicht: 638g
• ISBN-13: 9781316506387
• ISBN-10: 131650638X
• Artikelnr.: 48400943