The debate

Interesting question. There was a documentary program here in the UK 'Horizon' Titled Dr Money and the Boy with no Penis.

It was about a scientific experiement done on a child you had to change sex from boy to girl because of major error resulting its penis being burnt off, (thats Dr money) and the experiement was to show whether if the 'boy' was raised as a girl, he would actually socially become a girl. (i.e. it was a experiement of nurture Vs Nature)

The experiemnt failed in a sad end, with the boy (as a grown up) killing himself.

I would say nature shapes us, always.

 

Reality, as usual, doesn't seem much interested in our debates. There are some things that are purely genetic, some that are purely cultural, a lot of cases where there is some additive contribution from both, and then there is the interesting case of interaction, which is just beginning to be studied. So you inherit a propensity to respond this way or that way to a given environment.

 

An example of "both" might be height; partly genetic, since tall or short people tend to have tall or short kids. But partly also due to nutrition, getting enough calcium as a child, and so on. The two effects are independent, but the result is a sort of sum of the two of them.

An example of interaction would be more speculative, since as I say this aspect of things is only now being studied. Take inteligence; part of the genome might not just raise the kid's IQ directly but make her more sensitive to positive cultural forces - education or music or whatever. So instead of saying that kid has a fine mind or a great talent it might be more correct to say the kid is able to take advantage of opportunities better than most. And that talent for taking advantage IS inherited!

But notice that if the opportunities are not there, the talent will not improve the kid at all. You might explain the Flynn effect this way; if IQ tests are the way to success, the take-advantage gene will enable the kid to do well on them, but if an IQ test is never seen except for some rare scientific investigation then the gene will have no fulcrum to act on and the resulting IQ measurement in those rare cases will be low.

 

In the long run, genes themselves are shaped by the environment. Interaction is all there is when you step back far enough.

 

The first prokaryotic cell did not just pop into existence. There was some form of history behind it, perhaps as is now thought some kind of RNA evolution that took a turn into DNA. The DNA told the cell what proteins to form and when. So there was inheritance even there.

 

BECAUSE there was that prior history! RNA and DNA and all that, plus a long series of more or less random events and subsequent deletion of some of the results but preservation of others in the flux of change. Evolution, in other words.