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Nature versus nurture
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Nature versus nurture
Nature versus nurture is a long-standing debate in biology and society about the relative influence on human beings of their genetic inheritance or biology (nature) and the environmental conditions of their development (nurture). Nature is what people think of as pre-wiring and is influenced by genetic inheritance and other biological factors. Nurture is generally taken as the influence of external factors after conception e.g. the product of exposure, experience and learning on an individual.
The phrase in its modern sense was popularized by the Victorian polymath Francis Galton, the modern founder of eugenics and behavioral genetics when he was discussing the influence of heredity and environment on social advancement. Galton was influenced by On the Origin of Species written by his half-cousin, the evolutionary biologist Charles Darwin. The complementary combination of the two concepts is an ancient concept (Ancient Greek: ἁπό φύσεως καὶ εὐτροφίας).[non-primary source needed]
The view that humans acquire all or almost all their behavioral traits from "nurture" was termed tabula rasa ('blank tablet, slate') by John Locke in 1690. A blank slate view (sometimes termed blank-slatism) in human developmental psychology, which assumes that human behavioral traits develop almost exclusively from environmental influences, was widely held during much of the 20th century. The debate between "blank-slate" denial of the influence of heritability, and the view admitting both environmental and heritable traits, was at the core of an ideological dispute over research agendas throughout the second half of the 20th century.
Today, the idea of a strong dichotomy of nature versus nurture is generally considered to have limited relevance. Both "nature" and "nurture" factors have been found to contribute substantially, often in an inextricable manner, to many processes studied by biologists, psychologists and anthropologists. Feedback loops have been found in which nature and nurture influence one another constantly, as seen in self-domestication. In ecology and behavioral genetics, researchers posit that nurture has an essential influence on the nature of an individual. Similarly in other fields, the dividing line between an inherited and an acquired trait has become unclear, as in epigenetics and fetal development.
According to Records of the Grand Historian (94 BC) by Sima Qian, during Chen Sheng Wu Guang uprising in 209 B.C., Chen Sheng asked the rhetorical question as a call to war: "Are kings, generals, and ministers merely born into their kind?" (Chinese: 王侯將相寧有種乎). Though Chen was obviously negative to the question, the phrase has often been cited as an early quest into the nature versus nurture problem.
John Locke's An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690) is often cited as the foundational document of the blank slate view. In the Essay, Locke specifically criticizes René Descartes's claim of an innate idea of God that is universal to humanity. Locke's view was harshly criticized in his own time. Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, complained that by denying the possibility of any innate ideas, Locke "threw all order and virtue out of the world," leading to total moral relativism. By the 19th century, the predominant perspective was contrary to that of Locke's, tending to focus on "instinct." Leda Cosmides and John Tooby noted that William James (1842–1910) argued that humans have more instincts than animals, and that greater freedom of action is the result of having more psychological instincts, not fewer.
The question of "innate ideas" or "instincts" was of some importance in the discussion of free will in moral philosophy. In 18th-century philosophy, this was cast in terms of "innate ideas" establishing the presence of a universal virtue, a prerequisite for objective morals. In the 20th century, this argument was in a way inverted, since some philosophers (J. L. Mackie) now argued that the evolutionary origins of human behavioral traits forces us to concede that there is no foundation for ethics, while others (Thomas Nagel) treated ethics as a field of cognitively valid statements in complete isolation from evolutionary considerations.
In the early 20th century, there was an increased interest in the role of one's environment, as a reaction to the strong focus on pure heredity in the wake of the triumphal success of Darwin's theory of evolution. During this time, the social sciences developed as the project of studying the influence of culture in clean isolation from questions related to "biology. Franz Boas's The Mind of Primitive Man (1911) established a program that would dominate American anthropology for the next 15 years. In this study, he established that in any given population, biology, language, material, and symbolic culture, are autonomous; that each is an equally important dimension of human nature, but that none of these dimensions is reducible to another.
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Nature versus nurture
Nature versus nurture is a long-standing debate in biology and society about the relative influence on human beings of their genetic inheritance or biology (nature) and the environmental conditions of their development (nurture). Nature is what people think of as pre-wiring and is influenced by genetic inheritance and other biological factors. Nurture is generally taken as the influence of external factors after conception e.g. the product of exposure, experience and learning on an individual.
The phrase in its modern sense was popularized by the Victorian polymath Francis Galton, the modern founder of eugenics and behavioral genetics when he was discussing the influence of heredity and environment on social advancement. Galton was influenced by On the Origin of Species written by his half-cousin, the evolutionary biologist Charles Darwin. The complementary combination of the two concepts is an ancient concept (Ancient Greek: ἁπό φύσεως καὶ εὐτροφίας).[non-primary source needed]
The view that humans acquire all or almost all their behavioral traits from "nurture" was termed tabula rasa ('blank tablet, slate') by John Locke in 1690. A blank slate view (sometimes termed blank-slatism) in human developmental psychology, which assumes that human behavioral traits develop almost exclusively from environmental influences, was widely held during much of the 20th century. The debate between "blank-slate" denial of the influence of heritability, and the view admitting both environmental and heritable traits, was at the core of an ideological dispute over research agendas throughout the second half of the 20th century.
Today, the idea of a strong dichotomy of nature versus nurture is generally considered to have limited relevance. Both "nature" and "nurture" factors have been found to contribute substantially, often in an inextricable manner, to many processes studied by biologists, psychologists and anthropologists. Feedback loops have been found in which nature and nurture influence one another constantly, as seen in self-domestication. In ecology and behavioral genetics, researchers posit that nurture has an essential influence on the nature of an individual. Similarly in other fields, the dividing line between an inherited and an acquired trait has become unclear, as in epigenetics and fetal development.
According to Records of the Grand Historian (94 BC) by Sima Qian, during Chen Sheng Wu Guang uprising in 209 B.C., Chen Sheng asked the rhetorical question as a call to war: "Are kings, generals, and ministers merely born into their kind?" (Chinese: 王侯將相寧有種乎). Though Chen was obviously negative to the question, the phrase has often been cited as an early quest into the nature versus nurture problem.
John Locke's An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690) is often cited as the foundational document of the blank slate view. In the Essay, Locke specifically criticizes René Descartes's claim of an innate idea of God that is universal to humanity. Locke's view was harshly criticized in his own time. Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, complained that by denying the possibility of any innate ideas, Locke "threw all order and virtue out of the world," leading to total moral relativism. By the 19th century, the predominant perspective was contrary to that of Locke's, tending to focus on "instinct." Leda Cosmides and John Tooby noted that William James (1842–1910) argued that humans have more instincts than animals, and that greater freedom of action is the result of having more psychological instincts, not fewer.
The question of "innate ideas" or "instincts" was of some importance in the discussion of free will in moral philosophy. In 18th-century philosophy, this was cast in terms of "innate ideas" establishing the presence of a universal virtue, a prerequisite for objective morals. In the 20th century, this argument was in a way inverted, since some philosophers (J. L. Mackie) now argued that the evolutionary origins of human behavioral traits forces us to concede that there is no foundation for ethics, while others (Thomas Nagel) treated ethics as a field of cognitively valid statements in complete isolation from evolutionary considerations.
In the early 20th century, there was an increased interest in the role of one's environment, as a reaction to the strong focus on pure heredity in the wake of the triumphal success of Darwin's theory of evolution. During this time, the social sciences developed as the project of studying the influence of culture in clean isolation from questions related to "biology. Franz Boas's The Mind of Primitive Man (1911) established a program that would dominate American anthropology for the next 15 years. In this study, he established that in any given population, biology, language, material, and symbolic culture, are autonomous; that each is an equally important dimension of human nature, but that none of these dimensions is reducible to another.