The Concept of Plasticity in the History of the Nature-Nurture Debate in the Early 20 th Century (original) (raw)

The Nurture of Nature: Hereditary Plasticity in Evolution

Philosophical Psychology, 2008

During the late 1930s and the early 1940s, a particularly productive period in his scientific life, Conrad Hal Waddington (1905-75) started to construct a new synthesis between genetics, embryology and evolution. In the 4 years between 1939 and 1943, before he became involved in military activity during the Second World War, he published two substantial books and several seminal papers, all of which were explicitly geared towards constructing of an integrated view of biology. 'The Epigenotype', 1 published in 1942 in the semi-popular science journal Endeavour, is one of these papers. In it, Waddington presented and developed some of the ideas that he had already discussed in his books, and also defined, albeit informally, a new domain of research, epigenetics-the study of the causal mechanisms intervening between the genotype and the phenotype.

Synthesis and Separation in the History of ‘Nature’ and ‘Nurture’

For much of the twentieth century scientific psychology treated the relative contributions of nature and nurture to the development of phenotypes as the result of two quite separate sources of influence. One, nature, was linked to biological perspectives, often manifest as “instinct”, while the other, nurture, was taken to reflect psychological influences. We argue that this separation was contingent on historical circumstance. Prior to about 1920, several perspectives in biology and psychology promoted the synthesis of nature and nurture. But between 1930 and 1980 that synthetic consensus was lost in America as numerous influences converged to promote a view that identified psychological and biological aspects of mind and behavior as inherently separate. Around 1960, during the hegemony of behaviorism, Daniel Lehrman, Gilbert Gottlieb, and other pioneers of developmental psychobiology developed probabilistic epigenesis to reject predeterminist notions of instinct and restore a synthesis. We describe the earlier and later periods of synthesis and discuss several influences that led to the separation of nature and nurture in the middle of the twentieth century.

The Mirage of a Space between Nature and Nurture

2011

We are grateful to the commentators for taking the time to respond to our article. Too many interesting and important points have been raised for us to tackle them all in this response, and so in the below we have sought to draw out the major themes. These include problems with both the term 'ultimate causation' and the proximate-ultimate causation dichotomy more generally, clarification of the meaning of reciprocal causation, discussion of issues related to the nature of development and phenotypic plasticity and their roles in evolution, and consideration of the need for an extended evolutionary synthesis.

The history of the nature/nurture issue

Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 2012

It is worthy to supplement Charney with two historical issues: (1) There were two rival trends in the rebirth of genetic thought in the 1960s: the universal and the variation related. This traditional duality suggested that heredity cannot be equated with genetic determinism. (2) The classical debates and reinterpretation of adoption/twin studies in the 1980s regarding intelligence suggested that the environment had a more active role in unfolding the genetic program.

An Archaeology of Plasticity (Chapter 1 Impressionable Biologies, Routledge, 2019)

Living in postgenomic times: Of imprinting and plasticity. This chapter explores the fundamental ambiguity of the concept of plasticity – between openness and determination, change and stabilization of forms. This pluralism of meanings is used to unpack different instantiations of corporeal plasticity across various epochs, starting from ancient and early modern medicine, particularly humouralism. A genealogical approach displaces the notion that plasticity is a unitary phenomenon, coming in the abstract, and illuminates the unequal distribution of different forms of plasticities across social, gender, and ethnic groups. Taking a longer view of the plastic body as a ubiquitous belief in traditions predating and coexisting with modern medicine will help contextualize the seeming radicalism of today’s turn to permeability and the exceptionalism of Western findings. By highlighting the complex biopolitical usages of plasticity in the past, the chapter warns against simplistic appropriations of the term in contemporary body/world configurations driven by findings in neuroscience, epigenetics and microbiomics.

THE NATURE-NURTURE CONTROVERSY: A DIALECTICAL ESSAY

For millennia, scholars, philosophers and poets have speculated on the origins of individual differences in behavior, and especially the extent to which these differences owe to inborn natural factors (nature) versus life circumstances (nurture). The modern form of the nature-nurture debate took shape in the late 19th century when, based on his empirical studies, Sir Francis Galton concluded that 1

17 Letters on Nature and Nurture

2006

Humans and most other animals have a dual origin. One of these origins is defined by the genetic background that assembles brains, thereby implanting prewired expectations about the sensory and causal regularities of the world in which we are born. The second origin is the organized system of experiences that provides a plethora of feedback and instructions that slowly shape the brain into its final status. In humans, these experiences start especially early to modify the newborn brain and provide an unusually variable tapestry. For decades, scientists have tried to disentangle the impact of nature and nurture, and have proposed men­ tal territories that are mostly governed by one or the other. Here, I argue that genetic predispositions and environmentally dependent learning processes inter­ act continuously at every neural and mental entity, from cortical development to social customs. Not a single territory of our mind is outside the scope of this interaction.