The Violinist's Thumb

Understanding DNA can help us understand how our bodies and, to some extent, minds work. But understanding the limits of DNA will also help us understand how our bodies and minds don't work. To a similar degree, we'll have to prepare ourselves for whatever DNA says (and doesn't say) about intractable social problems like gender and race relations, and whether traits like aggression and intelligence are fixed or flexible. And we'll have to decide whether to trust eager thinkers who, while acknowledging that we don't understand completely how DNA works, already talk about the opportunity, even the obligation, to improve upon four billion years of biology.

To this point of view, the most remarkable story about DNA is that our species survived long enough to master it.In other words, the collective history in this book is still being constructed; and this book aims, in retelling that history, to arrive at wisdom enough to understand the choices we have to make.

The Violinist's Thumb is structured so that each chapter provides the answer to one mystery. The mysteries start in the remote past; move into our animal and primate ancestries; and culminate with the emergence of cultured human beings. Some are recent mysteries about how we acquired language or 'beat' the Neanderthals. Some reach back to our earliest hours. But as the book advances chronologically toward the final section, I admit that the mysteries have not been fully solved. They remain mysteries-especially the mystery of how this grand human experiment of uprooting everything there is to know about our DNA will turn out.