Helena de Bres
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How Free Are You?
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If you ask people why twins make them doubt their own freedom, they’re most likely to point to the results of twin studies. In 1875, Charles Darwin’s cousin Francis Galton noted the scientific usefulness of single-egg twins being genetically identical. It follows, Galton pointed out, that any differences between a pair of them can’t be explained by differences in their genes, but must be due to variation in their environments. Thomas Bouchard, who ran the famous Minnesota Study of Twins Reared Apart in the 1980s, has called the twin method “the Rosetta Stone of behavioral genetics,” allowing scientists a godlike reach into the previously hidden roots of human features and behavior. Stories of twins separated at birth sometimes inspire existential claustrophobia, sometimes moral panic. Other times, they bring on a feeling akin to grief. This comes up in Identical Strangers, a memoir co-written by twins Elyse Schein and Paula Bernstein.

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How to Be Multiple

The Philosophy of Twins

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