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

biology Biology is the scientific study of life and living organisms. It is a broad natural science that encompasses a wide range of fields and unifying principles that explain the structure, function, growth, History of life, origin, evolution, and ...

and

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

at the

Open University The Open University (OU) is a Public university, public research university and the largest university in the United Kingdom by List of universities in the United Kingdom by enrolment, number of students. The majority of the OU's undergraduate ...

and Gresham College, London.

Early life

Born in

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

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

, he was brought up as an

Orthodox Jew Orthodox Judaism is a collective term for the traditionalist branches of contemporary Judaism. Theologically, it is chiefly defined by regarding the Torah, both Written and Oral, as literally revealed by God on Mount Sinai and faithfully tran ...

. Rose says that he decided to become an

atheist Atheism, in the broadest sense, is an absence of belief in the existence of deities. Less broadly, atheism is a rejection of the belief that any deities exist. In an even narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there no ...

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, a ...

King's College, Cambridge King's College, formally The King's College of Our Lady and Saint Nicholas in Cambridge, is a List of colleges of the University of Cambridge, constituent college of the University of Cambridge. The college lies beside the River Cam and faces ...

, and neurochemistry at the

Institute of Psychiatry The Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience (IoPPN) is a centre for mental health and neuroscience research, education and training in Europe. It is dedicated to understanding, preventing and treating mental illness, neurological co ...

King's College London King's College London (informally King's or KCL) is a public university, public research university in London, England. King's was established by royal charter in 1829 under the patronage of George IV of the United Kingdom, King George IV ...

.Biography at ''The Moral Maze''.
/ref>

Academic career

Following a Fellowship at

New College, Oxford New College is a constituent college of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. Founded in 1379 by Bishop William of Wykeham in conjunction with Winchester College as New College's feeder school, New College was one of the first col ...

, 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 the 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 Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative disease and the cause of 60–70% of cases of dementia. The most common early symptom is difficulty in remembering recent events. As the disease advances, symptoms can include problems wit ...

on which he has published some 300 research papers and reviews. He has written several

popular science Popular science (also called pop-science or popsci) is an interpretation of science intended for a general audience. While science journalism focuses on recent scientific developments, popular science is more broad ranging. It may be written ...

books and regularly writes for ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...

'' newspaper and the ''

London Review of Books The ''London Review of Books'' (''LRB'') is a British literary magazine published bimonthly that features articles and essays on fiction and non-fiction subjects, which are usually structured as book reviews. History The ''London Review of Book ...

''. From 1999 to 2002, he gave public lectures as a 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 that does not accept students or award degrees. It was founded in 1597 under the Will (law), will of Sir Thomas Gresham, ...

, 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. It was founded in 1911 and acquired the existing '' Biochemical Journal'' the following year. T ...

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 recognise contributions to science and technology and whose professional achievements hav ...

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

Rhone-Poulenc Science Book Prize The Royal Society Science Book 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 Horse Public House in London to discuss brain-related topics (the 'London Black ...

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 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 science an ...

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 occupied Palestinian territories, also referred to as the Palestinian territories, consist of the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and the Gaza Strip—two regions of the former British Mandate for Palestine that have been occupie ...

, 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 ...

. 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. The station replaced the BBC Home Service on 30 September 1967 and broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes from the BBC's headquarters at Broadcasti ...

ethics Ethics is the philosophy, philosophical study of Morality, moral phenomena. Also called moral philosophy, it investigates Normativity, normative questions about what people ought to do or which behavior is morally right. Its main branches inclu ...

debating series '' The Moral Maze''. He is a Distinguished Supporter of

Humanists UK Humanists UK, known from 1967 until May 2017 as the British Humanist Association (BHA), is a charitable organisation which promotes secular humanism and aims to represent Irreligion in the United Kingdom, non-religious people in the UK throug ...

. 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 F ...

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, journalist, and video game theorist. 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 Showe ...

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 (psychologist), Richard S ...

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

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

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 regard to the ancestral problems they evolved ...

, and

adaptationism Adaptationism is a scientific perspective on evolution that focuses on accounting for the products of evolution as collections of adaptive traits, each a product of natural selection with some adaptive rationale. A formal alternative would be to ...

, most prominently in the book ''

Not in Our Genes ''Not in Our Genes: Biology, Ideology and Human Nature'' is a 1984 book by the evolutionary geneticist Richard Lewontin, the neurobiologist Steven Rose, and the psychologist Leon Kamin, in which the authors criticize sociobiology and genetic dete ...

'' (1984), laying out their opposition to ''Sociobiology'' (

E. O. Wilson Edward Osborne Wilson (June 10, 1929 – December 26, 2021) was an American biologist, naturalist, ecologist, and entomologist known for developing the field of sociobiology. Born in Alabama, Wilson found an early interest in nature and frequ ...

, 1975), ''

The Selfish Gene ''The Selfish Gene'' is a 1976 book on evolution by ethologist Richard Dawkins that promotes the gene-centred view of evolution, as opposed to views focused on the organism and the group. The book builds upon the thesis of George C. Willia ...

'' (

Richard Dawkins Richard Dawkins (born 26 March 1941) is a British evolutionary biology, evolutionary biologist, zoologist, science communicator and author. He is an Oxford fellow, emeritus fellow of New College, Oxford, and was Simonyi Professor for the Publ ...

, 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 fallacy (sometimes written as strawman) is the informal fallacy of refuting an argument different from the one actually under discussion, while not recognizing or acknowledging the distinction. One who engages in this fallacy is said ...

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 Heritability is a statistic used in the fields of Animal husbandry, breeding and genetics that estimates the degree of ''variation'' in a phenotypic trait in a population that is due to genetic variation between individuals in that population. T ...

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 Stephen Jay Gould ( ; September 10, 1941 – May 20, 2002) was an American Paleontology, paleontologist, Evolutionary biology, evolutionary biologist, and History of science, historian of science. He was one of the most influential and widely re ...

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, *''

'' (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. Pluto Press states that it publishes "radical, left‐wing non‐fiction books", and is anti-capitalist and internationalist. It belongs to The Internat ...

, *''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 Edge.org is a website for science and technology intellectuals. Its chief editor is the publisher and businessman John Brockman. The site is a critically noted online magazine exploring scientific and intellectual ideas. The website is prod ...

Debate
with

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

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