Nature vs. nuture: False dichotomy
Very interesting review of a book challenging the traditional view. The review begins:
Is there anything new to say about how we should understand the nature-nurture problem? The answer is yes, and it is not because there are conceptual matters still unresolved. It is because no one has offered a way to think about the problem that is simple and grabs the imagination. Absent a clarifying story, teachers continue to struggle to explain it to students. And some of us continue to write books and papers in which we say or imply things we do not literally mean about nature and nurture, genes and environment, heritability and plasticity — things we later regret having phrased the way we did. So wouldn’t it be nice if there were a small book that explained, clearly and simply, how to understand the problem, pitfalls and all; if there were a concise manual — something like Strunk and White’s famous style guide – that we could just hand to our students; if there were a little manifesto that we could curl up with and reread every couple of years to restore to our thinking the clarity we know this difficult subject deserves? The Mirage of a Space Between Nature and Nurture, by Evelyn Fox Keller, may be just the book we’ve been waiting for.
Here is the issue she is addressing. . .
