Basic Instinct: The Genesis of Behavior by Mark S. Blumberg

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Synopsis

A panicked mother runs through highway traffic to save her wandering child. A green turtle swims hundreds of miles to return to the beach on which it was hatched. Your child utters her first word. Have you ever wondered what causes you to react in a certain way to a certain situation, and if you would react differently under different circumstances?

From Charles Darwin to Malcolm Gladwell, writers and scientists have been fascinated by what prompts us to snap decisions. In Basic Instinct, neuroscientist Mark Blumberg provides readers with a logical perspective that does not rely on the clichéd explanations that have become so prevalent among scientists and laypeople alike. Blumberg delves into the debate between the nativists and evolutionary psychologists, who believe we are born with an instinctive knowledge about the world, and the epigeneticists, who believe that instincts are built anew in each of us, generation after generation. The result is an entertaining and balanced examination of the role of genes, experience, and evolution in the construction of behavior.

Publishers Weekly

This is a passionate (and at times polemical) survey of what contemporary neuroscience has to say about the nature of instinct. Actually, as it turns out, it might be more accurate to say the "nurture" of instinct, since Blumberg firmly argues against the perspective that what we think of as instincts are innate-he reframes "instincts," ranging from a baby's tendency to mimic faces to monkeys' fear of snakes, as a consequence of reflexes rather than innate knowledge. Though initially a bit dense with scientific jargon, the book picks up midway through, and the then generally accessible prose skillfully unpacks behaviors that seem instinctive, ranging from the mundane (getting thirsty) to the astonishing (androgenital licking in newborn rats). The writing is as persuasive as it is rich in intriguing detail, and a reader may well find that, by the end of the book, the word "nativism" (the perspective that animals and humans are born with cognitive instincts in place, which Blumberg at one point calls "an intellectual and experimental red herring") has become a dirty word. (Sept.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Biography

Mark S. Blumberg is a neuroscientist at the University of Iowa and the author of Body Heat: Temperature and Life on Earth. He has published over sixty journal articles and chapters on such topics as sleep, animal behavior, temperature regulation, and communication. He is associate editor of the journal "Behavioral Neuroscience." After graduating from Brandeis University, he received his doctorate in biopsychology from the University of Chicago. He is the recipient of an Early Career Award from the American Psychological Association and, most recently, of an Independent Scientist Award from the National Institute of Mental Health.