In Our Genes, Rasmus Grønfeldt Winther asks what, if anything, we can learn about ourselves from evolutionary genetics and genomics. His answer is cautiously optimistic: while the meanings of genomic data are perennially dependent on specific, contingent, modeling practices, genomics can shed valuable (if ambiguous) light on human relationships. “Our genes are a mirror through which we can see, and reflect on, our ultimate connection to one another and to all of life,” writes Winther (30). Likewise, Our Genes offers an invitation to reflect on connections and conversations between biology and philosophy.

Our Genes begins with a historical perspective on the origins of genetics and statistics in Chapter 2, flagging their entanglement with eugenics and skillfully introducing key concepts from evolutionary theory and population genetics along the way. In Chapter 3, Winther distinguishes the plural meanings of the term population, focusing on the disconnect between theoretical, idealized populations from those in the lab or in the wild. Winther’s section on the term effective population size is particularly evocative, as the difference between the theoretical, idealized effective population size and the true census population size (for example, humans have an effective population size in the tens of thousands, but a census population size of eight billion (89)) is a stark reminder of how disjoint theory can be from the physical reality it represents.

Chapter 4 offers a more technical primer on metrics and measures, contextualizing genetic diversity, heterozygosity, and differentiation in the scientific practices where they figure most prominently: conservation biology, taxonomy, and phylogenetics, respectively (113). These distinctions anchor Winther’s close analysis of Lewontin’s (1972) influential paper, “The Apportionment of Human Diversity,” and related work. Winther argues that Lewontin combines taxonomic and conservation biological analyses to emphasize both similarity among human populations and diversity within these groups (118). However, Winther emphasizes that any conclusions drawn from analyses of genetic variation depend crucially on researchers’ decisions about a variety of factors, such as how much difference in heterozygosity between groups is indicative of population structure (117). As he writes, “interpreting genomic data involves values and assumptions, and we need to select from a plurality of modeling methodologies, in order to gain clues about the pattern and dynamics of human evolution” (126). This recurring thesis of Our Genes complements an abundance of work by feminist philosophers of science, scholars of science and values, and philosophers of data, models, and idealization (e.g., Potochnik Reference Potochnik2017; Bokulich and Parker Reference Bokulich and Parker2021).

Consistent with this focus on conventions and contingencies, Chapter 5 delivers one of the key contributions of this text: a warning against “pernicious reification,” or “conflating and confusing model and world” with respect to populations, clusters, metrics, and statistics (132). Here, Winther builds on his analysis in chapters 3 and 4 to note that Lewontin’s 1972 paper, while a key contribution to the field, conflates statistical estimates with the true parameters of the populations they represent (161). Likewise, Winther cautions against interpreting the outputs of programs like the genetic clustering software STRUCTURE as a “natural number” of “actual” populations, pointing to their dependence on modeling practices and interpretative choices (159-60). Because model inputs and outputs are influenced by these factors, they may reflect scientists’ pre-existing theories and biases.

The second half of the book considers the applications of genomic methods and models from this vantage point. Winther examines empirical patterns of human genomic variation in Chapter 6 and evidence of natural selection in human populations in Chapter 7. A highlight of this analysis is Winther’s articulation of clear criteria for the success of adaptationist explanations, which he illustrates by evaluating evidence of selection with respect to the spleen size of Bajau freedivers. In Chapter 8, Winther turns to the roles of genes and environments in debates about precision medicine, intelligence, and female orgasm. Chapter 9 defends antirealism about biological races insofar as these are expected to be aligned with racialized social groups, and extends Winther’s conventionalist analysis to biogenomic clusters. Here, Winther aptly notes that how we ask and answer questions about the biological reality of race “reveals more about our own beliefs…than it does about the biological nature of populations” (279).

Our Genes is rich with historical, philosophical, and empirical insight into human genomics. Precisely because the book succeeds in speaking to multiple audiences, it faces the additional challenge of ensuring that readers from diverse backgrounds are able to fully appreciate the context, intuitions, and stakes behind its claims. In this vein, there are a few instances where readers who are encountering these philosophical or biological issues for the first time may need additional context to evaluate these claims for themselves.

One such case is Winther’s contextualization of the issues and debates surrounding STRUCTURE. Winther asserts that by “demanding clarity about the…kinds of populations used in studies, and the inferences legitimately supported by these populations, we can discourage the use of methods for questions they cannot legitimately answer” (95), and brings up Nicholas Wade’s (described as simply a “science journalist”) misinterpretation of Tishkoff et al. 2009’s STRUCTURE analysis as an example of one such preventable media error. Though we embrace Winther’s careful evaluation of research methods, we are somewhat skeptical of this diagnosis. For one thing, discussions around interpretation and overuse of STRUCTURE predate this episode. Second, the example of Wade’s A Troublesome Inheritance, a book widely decried by population geneticists (including Tishkoff) as “misappropriati[ng]... research from our field to support arguments about differences among human societies” (Coop et al. Reference Coop, Eisen, Nielsen, Przeworski and Rosenberg2014) feels unrepresentative of innocent reporting mistakes which could be prevented by achieving greater clarity within the field about what STRUCTURE and related methods say.

Relatedly, Winther’s discussion sometimes frames the politicization of genomics as a symmetric phenomenon, for example pitting Jonathan Marks and Charles Murray as poles presenting genomics “from the left or the right” (15). This approach runs the risk of inadvertently legitimizing fraught, external interpretations of genomic studies arguing for genetic racial differences that often run directly counter to the conclusions of the authors themselves. In line with this, Winther’s description of debates in the field occasionally glosses over controversy, such as in his treatment of the gene FOXP2 (212). Here, Winther again mentions A Troublesome Inheritance and a critique by H. Allen Orr, but does not unravel the content or context of the debate, nor does he mention recent work arguing that there is no evidence of selection at FOXP2 at all (Atkinson et al. Reference Atkinson, Amanda Jane Audesse, Dean Michael Bobo, Ramachandran and Mariah Henn2018). This omission, which avoids diving too deeply into the political debates surrounding natural selection in humans, might aid in bringing the text to a wider audience. However, it may also put off readers who disagree that genomics should not be politicized in any way, or read politics in Winther’s own aesthetic choices (98, 262).

This framing may reflect Winther’s explicit argument that a central aim of Our Genes is to evaluate the meaning of genomics independently from ideology and politics. Consider Winther’s optimism about learning from our genes: “When released from the political agendas in which they are often trapped, genetics and genomics, informed by statistics, can tell us incredible things about ourselves and our species” (7). To be sure, Winther’s argument that some moral and political questions, such as human rights, should not depend on genomics is compelling. Here, Our Genes bears comparison with legal scholar Joanna Wuest’s recent Born This Way (2023), which offers a critical analysis of strategic appeals to biological conceptions of sexuality in LGBTQ+ rights advocacy. We endorse Winther’s assessment of the strategic, epistemological, and ethical failures of using genomics to justify (in)equality. We worry, however, about Winther’s recommendation that “we must work toward consolidating genomic discourse and attempt to keep it apart from our political lives” (189).

Winther himself is well aware that genomics does not exist in a vacuum, as he argues that “we cannot escape the political and ethical implications of statistical analyses….Tracking ethics and power is imperative in human evolutionary genomics” (303). Further, Winther elsewhere skillfully highlights roles for values in making sense of genomics. In light of this, perhaps we should read Winther as considering more in-depth political analyses beyond the scope of Our Genes, endeavoring instead to bring a wide audience together by acknowledging and sidestepping potentially divisive issues. Nonetheless, we note that such an approach may sacrifice our ability to fully grapple with social and political sources of “amplified inductive risk” in genomics (Havstad Reference Havstad2022) and to prioritize projects on robustly firmer political footing (Anderson Reference Anderson2004; Brown Reference Brown2020). The integration of genomic discourse into our political lives is something that Winther’s audiences thus may wish to preserve, albeit with greater specificity.

On the whole, the scope of Winther’s analysis is in and of itself impressive. Winther effectively extracts assumptions latent in the metrics and measures used in the practice of population genetics, and highlights the effects of these assumptions in how geneticists interpret their results. The result is an uncommonly interdisciplinary project which invites multiple audiences to important and contested areas of inquiry. Winther stresses that there is something to be gained by population geneticists in thinking deeply about the field, a timely point in a climate where population genetics is increasingly cited and misused by extremists (Carlson et al. Reference Carlson, Henn and Al-Hindi2022).

Our Genes concludes with broader reflections on statistical inference and the possibility of knowledge in complex biological systems in Chapter 10, emphasizing the value of pluralistic, perspectival inquiry. In this sense, Winther’s genes hold up not so much a single mirror lens to biological relationships, as what Sandra Mitchell (Reference Mitchell2020) terms a “fractured looking glass” of perspectives: an incredible diversity of meanings and representations that depend as much on who is looking – and how – as they do on the phenomena themselves. In light of this, perhaps Our Genes’ most important contribution is in laying ground for further fruitful conversation and collaboration in, and about, an evolving field.