Biological determinism
Biological determinism, also known as genetic determinism,[1] is the belief that human behaviour is directly controlled by an individual's genes or some component of their physiology, generally at the expense of the role of the environment, whether in embryonic development or in learning.[2] Genetic reductionism is a similar concept, but it is distinct from genetic determinism in that the former refers to the level of understanding, while the latter refers to the supposedly causal role of genes.[3] Biological determinism has been associated with movements in science and society including eugenics, scientific racism, and the debates around the heritability of IQ,[4] the basis of sexual orientation,[5] and sociobiology.[6]
In 1892, the German evolutionary biologist
Galton popularized the phrase
History
Germ plasm
In 1892, the Austrian biologist August Weismann proposed that multicellular organisms consist of two separate types of cell: somatic cells, which carry out the body's ordinary functions, and germ cells, which transmit heritable information. He called the material that carried the information, now identified as DNA, the germ plasm, and individual components of it, now called genes, determinants which controlled the organism.[9] Weismann argued that there is a one-way transfer of information from the germ cells to somatic cells, so that nothing acquired by the body during an organism's life can affect the germ plasm and the next generation. This effectively denied that Lamarckism (inheritance of acquired characteristics) was a possible mechanism of evolution.[10] The modern equivalent of the theory, expressed at molecular rather than cellular level, is the central dogma of molecular biology.[11]
Eugenics
Early ideas of biological determinism centred on the inheritance of undesirable traits, whether physical such as
Scientific racism
Under the influence of determinist beliefs, the American
Heritability of IQ
Human sexual orientation
Human sexual orientation, which ranges over
Sociobiology
Nature versus nurture debate
The belief in biological determinism was matched in the 20th century by a
See also
- Behavioral epigenetics – Study of epigenetics' influencing behavior
- Behavioural genetics – Study of genetic-environment interactions influencing behaviour
- Blood quantum laws – American laws of race
- Dual inheritance theory – Theory of human behavior
- Genetic fallacy – Fallacy of irrelevance
- Nature–culture divide – Theoretical foundation of anthropology
- One-drop rule – Historical racial classification rule
- Social determinism – Theory of human behavior
References
- S2CID 224834276.
I will use here 'biology' and 'genetics' ... interchangeably ... because this is the way they are used in most of the literature I analyze here ... Critics accuse those who use biology to explain every possible human trait of presupposing the truth of biological or genetic determinism.
- ^ "Biological determinism". Oxford Reference. 2021. Retrieved 26 September 2021.
The idea that an individual's personality or behaviour is caused by their particular genetic endowment, rather than by social or cultural factors—by nature rather than nurture.
- ISBN 978-1351803199.
- ^ S2CID 29672121.
- ^ Lewontin, Richard; Rose, Steven; Kamin, Leon (1984). Not in Our Genes: Biology, Ideology and Human Nature. Pantheon Books. pp. 131–163.
- ^ S2CID 4144395.
- .
- ISBN 978-0-8050-7280-8.
- ^ Weismann, August (1892). Das Keimplasma: eine Theorie der Vererbung [The Germ Plasm: A Theory of Inheritance] (in German). Jena: S. Fischer Verlag.
- ^ Huxley, Julian (1942). Evolution, the modern synthesis. Allen and Unwin. p. 17.
- ISBN 978-0-7391-7436-4.)
Where Weismann would say that it is impossible for changes acquired during an organism's lifetime to feed back onto transmissible traits in the germ line, the CDMB now added that it was impossible for information encoded in proteins to feed back and affect genetic information in any form whatsoever, which was essentially a molecular recasting of the Weismann barrier.
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ignored (help - Proceedings of the Royal Institution of Great Britain. 7: 227–236.
- ^ Allen, Garland Edward (9 December 2015). "Biological determinism". Encyclopædia Britannica.
- ^ Gould, Stephen Jay (1981). The Mismeasure of Man. W. W. Norton.
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- ^ Giberson, Karl (15 August 2014). "Book review: 'The Serpent's Promise', on Bible-Science tensions, by Steve Jones". The Washington Post. Retrieved 9 June 2018.
- ^ Johnston, Ian (21 July 2016). "Altruism has more of an evolutionary advantage than selfishness, mathematicians say". The Independent.
- PMID 27450085.
- ISBN 978-0-002-00663-7.
- ISBN 978-0-199-92234-5.
- ^ Gutiérrez, Luci (January 24, 2014). "Time to Retire The Simplicity of Nature vs. Nurture". The Wall Street Journal.
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- S2CID 28319093.