Steven Peter Russell Rose (born 4 July 1938) is an English neuroscientist, author, and social commentator. He is emeritus professor of

biology Biology is the scientific study of life. It is a natural science with a broad scope but has several unifying themes that tie it together as a single, coherent field. For instance, all organisms are made up of cells that process hereditary i ...

and

neurobiology Neuroscience is the scientific study of the nervous system (the brain, spinal cord, and peripheral nervous system), its functions and disorders. It is a multidisciplinary science that combines physiology, anatomy, molecular biology, developme ...

at the

Open University The Open University (OU) is a British public research university and the largest university in the United Kingdom by number of students. The majority of the OU's undergraduate students are based in the United Kingdom and principally study off- ...

and Gresham College, London.

Early life

Born in

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the European mainland, continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

, he was brought up as an

Orthodox Jew Orthodox Judaism is the collective term for the traditionalist and theologically conservative branches of contemporary Judaism. Theologically, it is chiefly defined by regarding the Torah, both Written and Oral, as revealed by God to Moses on ...

, Rose says that he decided to become an atheist when he was eight years old. He went to a direct grant school in northwest London which operated a ''numerus clausus'' restricting the numbers of Jewish students. He studied

biochemistry Biochemistry or biological chemistry is the study of chemical processes within and relating to living organisms. A sub-discipline of both chemistry and biology, biochemistry may be divided into three fields: structural biology, enzymology and ...

King's College, Cambridge King's College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Formally The King's College of Our Lady and Saint Nicholas in Cambridge, the college lies beside the River Cam and faces out onto King's Parade in the centre of the cit ...

, and neurochemistry at the

Institute of Psychiatry The Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience (IoPPN) is a research institution dedicated to discovering what causes mental illness and diseases of the brain. In addition, its aim is to help identify new treatments for them and ways ...

, King's College London.Biography at ''The Moral Maze''.
/ref>

Academic career

Following a Fellowship at New College, Oxford, and a Medical Research Council research post, he was appointed to the professorship of biology at the newly instituted Open University in 1969. At the time he was Britain's youngest full professor and chair of department. At the Open University he established the Brain Research Group, within which he and his colleagues investigated the biological processes involved in memory formation and treatments for Alzheimer's disease on which he has published some 300 research papers and reviews. He has written several popular science books and regularly writes for ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

'' newspaper and the '' London Review of Books''. From 1999 to 2002, he gave public lectures as Professor of Physick (Genetics and Society) with his wife, the feminist sociologist Hilary Rose at

Gresham College Gresham College is an institution of higher learning located at Barnard's Inn Hall off Holborn in Central London, England. It does not enroll students or award degrees. It was founded in 1596 under the will of Sir Thomas Gresham, and hosts ove ...

, London. His work has won him numerous medals and prizes including the

Biochemical Society The Biochemical Society is a learned society in the United Kingdom in the field of biochemistry, including all the cellular and molecular biosciences. Structure It currently has around 7000 members, two-thirds in the UK. It is affiliated with th ...

medal for communication in science and the prestigious

Edinburgh Medal The Edinburgh Medal is a scientific medal given at the Edinburgh International Science Festival since 1989. The Edinburgh Medal is an award given each year to men and women recognized for their contributions to science and technology and whose prof ...

in 2004. His book ''The Making of Memory'' won the

Rhone-Poulenc Science Book Prize The Royal Society Science Books Prize is an annual £25,000 prize awarded by the Royal Society to celebrate outstanding popular science books from around the world. It is open to authors of science books written for a non-specialist audience, and ...

in 1993. In 2012 the

British Neuroscience Association The British Neuroscience Association (BNA) is a scientific society with around 2,500 members. Starting out as an informal gathering of scientists meeting at the Black Hourse Public House in London to discuss brain-related topics (the 'London Blac ...

gave him a lifetime award for "Outstanding contributions to neuroscience." Together with Hilary Rose he was a founder member of the

British Society for Social Responsibility in Science The British Society for Social Responsibility in Science (BSSRS) was a radical science movement most active in the 1970s. The main aims of the BSSRS was to raise awareness of the social responsibilities of scientists, the political aspects of sci ...

in the 1960s, and more recently they have been instrumental in calling for a boycott of Israeli academic institutions for as long as Israel continues its

occupation of the Palestinian Territories The Palestinian territories are the two regions of the former British Mandate for Palestine that have been militarily occupied by Israel since the Six-Day War of 1967, namely: the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and the Gaza Strip. The In ...

, on the grounds of Israeli academics' close relationship with the IDF. An open letter initiated by Steven and Hilary Rose, and also signed by 123 other academics was published in ''

'' on 6 April 2002. In 2004 Hilary Rose and he were the founding members of the

British Committee for the Universities of Palestine The British Committee for Universities of Palestine (BRICUP) was organized in 2004 in response to a Palestinian call for academic and cultural boycott of Israel. The idea of an academic boycott against Israel first emerged publicly in England o ...

. Rose was for several years a regular panellist on

BBC Radio 4 BBC Radio 4 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC that replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. It broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history from the BBC' ...

ethics Ethics or moral philosophy is a branch of philosophy that "involves systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong behavior".''Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' The field of ethics, along with aesthetics, concer ...

debating series '' The Moral Maze''. He is a Distinguished Supporter of Humanists UK. He was part of the Royal Society's working group producing their Brain Waves modules on the state of neuroscience and its social framing, and was a member of the

Nuffield Council on Bioethics The Nuffield Council on Bioethics is a UK-based independent charitable body, which examines and reports on bioethical issues raised by new advances in biological and medical research. Established in 1991, the Council is funded by the Nuffield Fo ...

Working Party on ''Novel Neurotechnologies''. His recent books with Hilary Rose include ''Alas Poor Darwin: Arguments against Evolutionary Psychology'', in 2012, ''Genes, Cells and Brains: the Promethean promises of the new biology'' (Verso), described by ''Guardian'' reviewer

Steven Poole Steven Poole (born 1972) is a British author and journalist. He particularly concerns himself with the abuse of language and has written two books on the subject: ''Unspeak'' (2006) and ''Who Touched Base In My Thought Shower?'' (2013). Biograph ...

as 'fascinating, lucid and angry' with a 'lethally impressive hit ratio' and most recently ''Can Neuroscience Change Our Minds?'' (Polity, 2016). His audio-autobiography forms part of the British Library's National Life Stories Collection of distinguished scientists. The sociologist

Nikolas Rose Nikolas Rose is a British sociologist and social theorist. He is Distinguished Honorary Professor at the Research School of Social Sciences, in the College of Arts and Social Sciences at the Australian National University and Honorary Profes ...

is his younger brother. Hilary and he have two sons. He remains an atheist.

Critique of genetic determinism

With

Richard Lewontin Richard Charles Lewontin (March 29, 1929 – July 4, 2021) was an American evolutionary biologist, mathematician, geneticist, and social commentator. A leader in developing the mathematical basis of population genetics and evolutionary theory, ...

and

Leon Kamin Leon J. Kamin (December 29, 1927 – December 22, 2017) was an American psychologist known for his contributions to learning theory and his critique of estimates of the heritability of IQ. He studied under Richard Solomon at Harvard and contributed ...

, Rose championed the "radical science movement". The three criticized

sociobiology Sociobiology is a field of biology that aims to examine and explain social behavior in terms of evolution. It draws from disciplines including psychology, ethology, anthropology, evolution, zoology, archaeology, and population genetics. Within ...

evolutionary psychology Evolutionary psychology is a theoretical approach in psychology that examines cognition and behavior from a modern evolutionary perspective. It seeks to identify human psychological adaptations with regards to the ancestral problems they evol ...

, and

adaptationism Adaptationism (also known as functionalism) is the Darwinian view that many physical and psychological traits of organisms are evolved adaptations. Pan-adaptationism is the strong form of this, deriving from the early 20th century modern synthesi ...

, most prominently in the book '' Not in Our Genes'' (1984), laying out their opposition to ''Sociobiology'' (

E. O. Wilson Edward Osborne Wilson (June 10, 1929 – December 26, 2021) was an American biologist, naturalist, entomologist and writer. According to David Attenborough, Wilson was the world's leading expert in his specialty of myrmecology, the study of an ...

, 1975), ''

The Selfish Gene ''The Selfish Gene'' is a 1976 book on evolution by the ethologist Richard Dawkins, in which the author builds upon the principal theory of George C. Williams's '' Adaptation and Natural Selection'' (1966). Dawkins uses the term "selfish gen ...

'' ( Richard Dawkins, 1976), and other works promoting an evolutionary explanation for human social behaviour. ''Not in Our Genes'' described Dawkins as "the most reductionist of sociobiologists". In retort, Dawkins wrote that the book practices a

straw man A straw man (sometimes written as strawman) is a form of argument and an informal fallacy of having the impression of refuting an argument, whereas the real subject of the argument was not addressed or refuted, but instead replaced with a false o ...

fallacy by distorting arguments ''in terms'' of genetics to "an idiotic travesty (that the properties of a complex whole are simply the ''sum'' of those same properties in the parts)", and accused the authors of giving "ideology priority over truth". Rose replied in the second edition of his book ''Lifelines''. Rose wrote further works in this area: in 2000 he jointly edited with the sociologist Hilary Rose, a critique of evolutionary psychology entitled ''Alas, Poor Darwin: Arguments Against Evolutionary Psychology''. In 2006 he wrote a paper dismissing classical heritability estimates as useful scientific measures in respect of human populations especially in the context of IQ. Rose wrote the introduction of ''The Richness of Life'' (2007) by the prominent American paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, and historian of science, Stephen Jay Gould.

Bibliography

Books (for selected papers see website Stevenroseonline.net) *''Chemical and Biological Warfare'', 1968, Chambers Harrap Publishers, *''Science and Society'', with Hilary Rose, Penguin, 1969 *''The Conscious Brain'', 1973, *''Radicalisation of Science'', with Hilary Rose, 1976, Macmillan, *''Political Economy of Science: Ideology of/in the Natural Science'', Editor with Hilary Rose, 1976, Macmillan, *''Towards a Liberatory Biology'' (Editor) 1981, Allison & Busby, *''Against Biological Determinism'' (Editor), 1982, Schocken, *'' Not in Our Genes'' (With

) 1984, *''No Fire, No Thunder: Threat of Chemical and Biological Weapons'', with Sean Murphy and Alistair Hay, 1984,

Pluto Press Pluto Press is a British independent book publisher based in London, founded in 1969. Originally, it was the publishing arm of the International Socialists (today known as the Socialist Workers Party), until it changed hands and was replaced ...

, *''The Chemistry of Life'', 1991 (first published in 1966), *''The Making of Memory'', 1992, *''Alas, Poor Darwin: Arguments against Evolutionary Psychology'', with Hilary Rose, 2000, *''Lifelines'', 2005, *''The 21st Century Brain'', 2005, *''The Future of the Brain: The Promise and Perils of Tomorrow's Neuroscience'', 2005, *''Genes, Cells and Brains: Bioscience's Promethean Promises'', with Hilary Rose, 2012, Verso, *''Can Neuroscience Change Our Minds? '', with Hilary Rose, 2016, Polity,

References

External links

Steven Rose Online
at

edge.org The Edge Foundation, Inc. is an association of science and technology intellectuals created in 1988 as an outgrowth of The Reality Club. Its main activities are reflected on the edge.org website, edited by publisher and businessman John Brockma ...

Debate
with

Steven Pinker Steven Arthur Pinker (born September 18, 1954) is a Canadian-American cognitive psychologist, psycholinguist, popular science author, and public intellectual. He is an advocate of evolutionary psychology and the computational theory of mind. ...

Biography
at ''Counterbalance Foundation''
Steven Rose articles
at ''