English Men of Science
English Men of Science

Author: Francis Galton

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-12-07

Total Pages: 185

ISBN-13: 0429665105

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This edition first published in 1970. Francis Galton has been honoured as the founder of biostatics and one of the creators of modern psychology. His principal aim was to establish a body of statistical knowledge about mental heredity which would result in a new pattern of behaviour for society. The relationship between outstanding men had led him to conclude that mental traits are inherited, and that an ideal society would take advantage of this "fact". In this particular work, which he termed a "Natural History of the English Men of Science of the present day", he examined at great length the antecedents, environment, education and hereditary features of the most prominent men of science in order to establish certain laws relating to heredity. It is a landmark in the transition from introspective to objective methods in biological and psychological research, and the author’s statistical, nonanecdotal approach was to prove immensely fruitful for the development of psychology. Indeed the questionnaire included in the work is probably the earliest in existence. As Professor Cowan points out in her introduction, historians as well as scientists intent upon a deeper understanding of the Victorian mind will find much of interest in this remarkable book.

The Mirage of a Space between Nature and Nurture
The Mirage of a Space between Nature and Nurture

Author: Evelyn Fox Keller

Publisher: Duke University Press

Published: 2010-06-11

Total Pages: 118

ISBN-13: 082239281X

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In this powerful critique, the esteemed historian and philosopher of science Evelyn Fox Keller addresses the nature-nurture debates, including the persistent disputes regarding the roles played by genes and the environment in determining individual traits and behavior. Keller is interested in both how an oppositional “versus” came to be inserted between nature and nurture, and how the distinction on which that opposition depends, the idea that nature and nurture are separable, came to be taken for granted. How, she asks, did the illusion of a space between nature and nurture become entrenched in our thinking, and why is it so tenacious? Keller reveals that the assumption that the influences of nature and nurture can be separated is neither timeless nor universal, but rather a notion that emerged in Anglo-American culture in the late nineteenth century. She shows that the seemingly clear-cut nature-nurture debate is riddled with incoherence. It encompasses many disparate questions knitted together into an indissoluble tangle, and it is marked by a chronic ambiguity in language. There is little consensus about the meanings of terms such as nature, nurture, gene, and environment. Keller suggests that contemporary genetics can provide a more appropriate, precise, and useful vocabulary, one that might help put an end to the confusion surrounding the nature-nurture controversy.

Nature Via Nurture
Nature Via Nurture

Author: Matt Ridley

Publisher: Harper Collins

Published: 2003-04-29

Total Pages: 340

ISBN-13: 0060006781

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Following his highly praised and bestselling book Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters, Matt Ridley has written a brilliant and profound book about the roots of human behavior. Nature via Nurture explores the complex and endlessly intriguing question of what makes us who we are. In February 2001 it was announced that the human genome contains not 100,000 genes, as originally postulated, but only 30,000. This startling revision led some scientists to conclude that there are simply not enough human genes to account for all the different ways people behave: we must be made by nurture, not nature. Yet again biology was to be stretched on the Procrustean bed of the nature-nurture debate. Matt Ridley argues that the emerging truth is far more interesting than this myth. Nurture depends on genes, too, and genes need nurture. Genes not only predetermine the broad structure of the brain, they also absorb formative experiences, react to social cues, and even run memory. They are consequences as well as causes of the will. Published fifty years after the discovery of the double helix of DNA, Nature via Nurture chronicles a revolution in our understanding of genes. Ridley recounts the hundred years' war between the partisans of nature and nurture to explain how this paradoxical creature, the human being, can be simultaneously free-willed and motivated by instinct and culture. Nature via Nurture is an enthralling,up-to-the-minute account of how genes build brains to absorb experience.

The Fate of Gender
The Fate of Gender

Author: Frank Browning

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2016-06-07

Total Pages: 363

ISBN-13: 1620406217

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Frank Browning takes us into human gender geographies around the world, from gender-neutral kindergartens in Chicago and Oslo to women's masturbation classes in Shanghai, from conservative Catholics in Paris fearful of God and Nature to transsexual Mormon parents in Utah. As he shares specific and engaging human stories, he also elucidates the neuroscience that distinguishes male and female biology, shows us how all parents' brains change during the first weeks of parenthood, and finally how men's and women's responses to age differ worldwide based not on biology but on their earlier life habits. Starting with Simone de Beauvoir's world-famous observation that one is not born a woman but instead becomes a woman, Browning goes on to show equally that no one is born a man but learns how to perform as a man, and that there is no fixed way of being masculine or feminine. Increasingly, the categories of "male" and "female" and even "gay" and "straight" seem old-fashioned and reductive. Just visible on the horizon is a world of gender and sexual fluidity that will remake our world in fundamental ways. Linking science to culture and behavior, and delving into the lives of individuals challenging historic notions, Browning questions the traditional division of Nature vs. Nurture in everything from plant science to sexual expression, arguing in the end that life consists of an endless waltz between these two ancient notions.

The Blank Slate
The Blank Slate

Author: Steven Pinker

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2003-08-26

Total Pages: 532

ISBN-13: 1101200324

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A brilliant inquiry into the origins of human nature from the author of Rationality, The Better Angels of Our Nature, and Enlightenment Now. "Sweeping, erudite, sharply argued, and fun to read..also highly persuasive." --Time Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize Updated with a new afterword One of the world's leading experts on language and the mind explores the idea of human nature and its moral, emotional, and political colorings. With characteristic wit, lucidity, and insight, Pinker argues that the dogma that the mind has no innate traits-a doctrine held by many intellectuals during the past century-denies our common humanity and our individual preferences, replaces objective analyses of social problems with feel-good slogans, and distorts our understanding of politics, violence, parenting, and the arts. Injecting calm and rationality into debates that are notorious for ax-grinding and mud-slinging, Pinker shows the importance of an honest acknowledgment of human nature based on science and common sense.

The Nurture Assumption
The Nurture Assumption

Author: Judith Rich Harris

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 1999

Total Pages: 486

ISBN-13: 0684857073

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Harris takes on the "experts" and boldly questions conventional wisdom of parents' role in their children's lives, asserting that it's not the home environment that shapes children, but the environment they share with their peers.