Upcoming Presentation by David Shenk, author, The Genius in All of Us: New Insights into Genetics, Talent, and IQ
on January 30, 2015 at the Oxford Hotel in Oxford as the keynote presentation for the 2015 PADSIS Conference.
Do talent and intelligence come from Nature or from Nurture? That question has been hotly debated for more than a century. David will explain why it's the wrong question, and will help PADSIS members to think about talent and achievement in an entirely new way.
It begins with a new understanding of genes and their dynamic interaction with the environment. Genes are not like robotic actors who always say the same lines in the same way; rather, they interact with their surroundings and can say different things depending on the context.
We are creatures of development. This does not mean that every person has exactly the same resources and opportunities, or that anyone can be great at anything. Genes do matter, and biological and circumstantial differences and advantages or disadvantages abound. However, by revealing talent to be a process rather than a thing, we can debunk the stale idea of “giftedness." The real gift, it turns out, belongs to virtually all of us: it is the plasticity and the extraordinary responsiveness built into basic human biology.
