Nature vs. Nurture

Paper Summary:

The debate over the issue of nature vs. nurture is an intense issue that carries strong points on either side of the argument. The nature school of thought emphasizes the role of instinct, patterns, and the influence of evolution on behavior. The nurture school of thought argues that behavior is learned, modifiable due to experience, and not, at least by humans, constrained by evolutionary history. This paper touches on the points of each aspect of this debate, examines new developments in research, and mentions how nature and nurture can interact.

From the Paper:

"Even the most diehard geneticists acknowledge that the environment plays a major role in shaping our behavior, temperament, and intelligence. With so much attention on explaining behavior in terms either of nature or nurture, scientists at the University of California, San Francisco recently described a fascinating example of how heredity and environment can interact. Perfect pitch is the ability to recognize the absolute pitch of a musical tone without any reference note. People with perfect pitch often have relatives with the same gift, and recent studies show that perfect pitch is a highly inherited trait, quite possibly the result of a single gene. But the studies also demonstrate a requirement for early musical training (before age six) in order to manifest perfect pitch. Time will tell whether there is a "perfect pitch" gene, but it seems reasonable to think that many personality and behavioral traits will not be exclusively the province of nature or nurture, but rather an inextricable combination of both."

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