Nature vs Nurture
The debate over what was more important in shaping the human personality, nature or nurture, has been going on since the 1600's. The whole debate began with a man named Richard Mulcaster. Mulcaster began this war with the writing of his book, Nature Makes the Boy Toward, and Nurture Sees Him Forward (1612). He wasn't the only one who brought the question to the attention of the public. Shakespeare, himself, incorporated this theme into his play "The Tempest." "A devil, a born devil, on whose nature/ nurture can never stick" (Fulkerson 1). Shakespeare was saying that a devil's innate existence could never be influenced by his surroundings. Charles Darwin, a evolutionary scientist, had a cousin, Francis Galton, who was the first thought to use the phrase "Nature vs. Nurture." (Fulkerson 1 1839) If one supports the nature side of the debate, they believe that no matter what kind of environment an individual is in they will turn out the same. Moreover, the nature side believes that people are born with everything they are going to need in life. Conversely, the nurture side of the debate states that people are born with blank slates and their experiences throughout their life and the environment in which they are raised shape
"Since the black-white IQ gap averaged about 15 points at the time these studies were done, they imply that about four-fifths of that gap was traceable to family-related factors (including schools and neighborhoods)" (Jencks 1). From this observation, Lombros concluded that all criminals were from a lower form of humans. The babies would increase their suck rate at the introduction of each speech sound, but decrease their rate as they became familiar with the sound. Plomin concluded that there were "differences in one site located in a gene for a hormone receptor that may be active in learning and memory, which could account for a one to two percent variance in IQ scores" (Wright 2). Back in 1870, criminal behavior was thought to be an innate trait. The author goes on to state that "This learning alters infants' perceptual systems, tuning them to the properties of their native language before word learning" (Kuhl, 1983 684). One of the studies of twins raised apart is on identical twin brothers. For example, two identical twins grew up and as adults lived in different cities. Gottesman also stated that if a child had a genetic makeup for schizophrenia, it didn't matter whether he/ she remained with schizophrenic parents. For example children are born with the ability to speak any language, but if the child is not exposed to a language the child will never fully be able to speak or understand any language. The study concluded that it is not until the age of about 6 to 8 that a child can no longer make the distinctions outside his/ her native language (Cole, 1993 130). Nothing that Lombros says still stands up today, but the debate over the heritability of criminal behavior still is raging, and, in 23 states, it is legal to make criminals impotent, although it isn't enforced anymore. Just as there is controversy about the role nature and nurture play in language development, there is also disagreement about the role of nature and nurture in the evolution of prosocial behavior such as altruism. This situation is incompatible with single-gene causation of schizophrenia independent of the environment.
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Acceptance Essays
