Chapter 1 of Understanding The Nature-Nurture Debate

Genesis: Why do We Care About Nature-Nurture?

First things first, the publisher has provided a ten-page sample of this chapter here. You can also see the TOC and the index, if you are interested.

There are other chapters of the book that are more controversial and which I will take more professional heat over, but this is the one I am most nervous about.

The first reason is that I lean into a trope that I follow here and there throughout the book, talking about myself personally. It’s part of what survives from the lectures on which it is based. Undergraduates enjoy it when you break the frame and speak about your personal life. I use it to leaven what are otherwise heavy topics. I hope it doesn’t seem self-indulgent.

Moreover, in this chapter I write about things that are outside my area of expertise. When I get to heritability and IQ and race I know I am going to start arguments, but I am at least reasonably confident that I know what I am talking about. Here, I talk about, of all things, theology.

In a nutshell, my point is this. We always think of Darwin as being a challenge to religious people whose worldview he challenged, but in fact the theory of evolution is a bigger challenge for those of us who believe in the theory of evolution. That is because Darwin forces us to recognize that as a matter of literal biology, human beings are just animals. I connect this to Freud, who explored the psychology of this realization.

Modern people know this, but we still don’t accept it. We treat our fellow humans differently than any other animal. Of course we do, as a matter of moral necessity. This leaves us with a dilemma- how can we accept that humans are material, evolved organisms just like the rest of nature, but still morally distinct? Getting the very furthest from my expertise, I argue that this is the theme of the Book of Genesis.

Those of you who have some familiarity with the scientific side of the nature-nurture debate have probably learned that it is about “genes vs. environment.” This is, in my view, incorrect, and it trivializes a problem that is much deeper. The book is essentially about how this misconception came to pass, and how we modern scientific sophisticates can find a way out.

The nature-nurture debate is about human beings relation with nature, and all that word implies. Are we unified with nature or alienated from it? Nurture refers to our ability to create ourselves outside of our biologically given natures, along with the psychological and moral challenges that ability entails.

You can order the book HERE.