Posted on 09/29/2007 9:53:22 AM PDT by blam
Why home doesn't matter
May 2007
Judith Rich Harris
The BBC series "Child of Our Time" assumes that studying children with their parents will help us understand how their personalities develop. But this is a mistake: parents influence their children mainly by passing on their genes. The biggest environmental influences on personality are those that occur outside the home
During much of the 20th century, it was considered impolite and unscientific to say that genes play any role in determining people's personalities, talents or intelligence. But we're in the 21st century now, the era of the genome. So when Robert Winston informs us, at the opening of each episode of the BBC1 documentary series Child of Our Time, that we're going to "find out what makes us who we are," we know he's going to say that people are the way they are partly for genetic reasons. (In case you've missed it, Child of Our Time is a project tracking the lives of 25 children for their first 20 years, returning to them each year to assess their progress. This year's series—the seventh—is being screened in three episodes, starting on Sunday 6th May.)
Child of Our Time is itself a sign of scientific progress because of its enlightened approach to the genome. Nevertheless, the series is scientifically misleading. Simply depicting the lives of 25 children, or sprinkling little "experiments" here and there throughout the programmes, sheds no light on the nature vs nurture question. Psychologists studied child development in this way for the better part of a century and learned remarkably little. Observing children at home or in school, individually or in groups, is not the way to answer the question of why they turn out the way they do.
(Excerpt) Read more at prospect-magazine.co.uk ...
Maybe she was correct.
GGG Ping.
If true, this means that violent and criminal kids cannot be changed but must instead be locked-up for the protection of the rest of us. Gritty stuff.
Ayup!
Or tolerated.
On the author’s curious harlequin twins, I wonder if any twin studies to determine difference between pairs of siblings based on vaginal vs cesarian birth?
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Thanks Blam. |
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The nurture part deals with reinforcing the valued traits and putting a lid on the less desireable behaviours.
With so many parents abdicating their role in favor of daycare or other surrogates (at best), it should be no wonder the results are jumbled.
The whole argument was old when Mark Twain wrote Puddin'head Wilson.
Then, too, some folks just ain't wired right...
Cogito said Descartes, and Kant said fine but that proves nothing.
Lucky for me I never brought up either philosopher.
They always lurk just under the surface, implied.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/genome/debate.html
“We simply do not have enough genes for this idea of biological determinism to be right,” asserted Craig Venter, president of Celera Genomics, one of the two teams that cracked the human genome last February. Indeed, Venter has wasted little time in playing down the importance of the genes he has catalogued. He cites the example of colon cancer, which is often associated with a defective “colon cancer” gene. Even though some patients carry this mutated gene in every cell, the cancer only occurs in the colon because it is triggered by toxins secreted by bacteria in the gut. Cancer, argues Venter, is an environmental disease. Strong support for this viewpoint appeared last year in the New England Journal of Medicine. Researchers in Scandinavia studying 45,000 pairs of twins concluded that cancer is largely caused by environmental rather than inherited factors, a surprising conclusion after a decade of headlines touting the discovery of the “breast cancer gene,” the “colon cancer gene,” and many more.
[Venter actually used his own cells during the billion$ sequencing of the genome, and as a consequence started taking some prevention measures for other possible future illnesses supposedly telegraphed in his own genes. Nice work if you can get it.]
As does Thomas Aquinas.
That’s right. This is balderdash.
And, little noticed, Augustine. And, the first Christian, Alexander the Great.
So, a child is born already hard wired to be a liberal or a conservative and the parent’s values have nothing to do with it.
I don’t think so...
Since my genetic composition indicates I am to be the Grand Emperor of the Universe, a title not yet recognized by society, I know irrefutably that genetic determinism is intrinsically a failed concept.
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