Whydo people have certain skills, ambitions and attitudes? Why do individualssuffer from mental illness? Why do mostpoverty stricken families continued to remain poverty stricken throughoutgenerations? Why do individuals act the way they do? Many causal factors havebeen proposed in question as why we are the way we are, but there two primary explanationswith strong social relevance that has debuted as prominent: our genes and theenvironment.
These two factors play a central role in the ongoing debates. Commonlytermed the “nature/nurture” question, is typically conceptualized as a contrastbetween genetic and environmental explanation.Throughouthistory there has always been a substantial controversy over whether a human’sdevelopment, behavior, personality, and intelligence stems from the environmentalinfluences of the community in which an individual is raised in or is it the geneticmakeup inherited from an individual’s parents which determine the development,behavior, personality, and intelligence of the human species.
Thiscontroversial debate began in 1869, when the world-renowned Francis Galtondebuted the phrase “Nature vs. Nurture”. Francis Galton was an all-around scholarwho contributed to many areas of study including science, mathematics, and the Englishlanguage but Francis Galton took a special liking to psychology where he spentmost of his career exploring the world of inheritance and evolution of traitsafter much exploration on that side of the debate of course he favored the sideof nature. The grounds of his favoring was solely based off the belief that intelligencewas an inherited trait he believe parents each contribute one-quarter toheredity of their children, grandparents each one-sixteenth and so forth.Another scholar in the world of psychology was the world-renowned English philosopherby the name of John Locke who coined the theory “the mind is a blank slate”meaning individuals are born without built in knowledge.
John Locke sided withnurture believing individuals learn through the experiences of life and the perceptionof life in their community.
