Nature vs. Nurture

It's the time old question of the nature of good and evil. Is one born bad (or good for that matter) or do we become who we are through a series of life trials? We can trace this debate back as early as man questioned his existence, however, the first person to discuss it (in reference to hereditary and environment on social advancement) was a cousin of Charles Darwin, named Francis Galton.

Galton was an English student of polymath and anthropology. For those who don't know, these are the studies of multiple sciences and studies to come to a concise conclusion and the study of human beings, past and present, drawing from social, biological, natural sciences and the humanities, respectively. Galton was at heart a statistician and as if to prove himself thus, he was the first to apply statistics to the study of human differences and inheritance of intelligence. He also was the first to introduce surveys and questionnaires in comunities in order to aid him in his research into anthropometry, which is the study of the measurement of the human individual. In anthropometry, he could literally study why one person sits in their chair at a 45° angle and why another chooses an angle closer to 90°. In these collective ways, Galton may have been the ideal candidate to study the question of nature vs. Nurture when he first asked it in the 1800's.

As I have previously stated, he wasn't the first to ponder the question but rather the first to construct such a concept concisely. The question of why are we the way we are has been going on for centuries and spans the interests of scientists, right up to Madison Avenue. One may recall, "Maybe she's born with it. Maybe it's Maybe line." Although it may be a bit of a stretch, the question of make up executives is how do we stray from the idea of natural beauty to convince the populace that human beings are far better off since they learned to put on make up.

Ultimately, the argument's good on both sides and god knows advertisers are great at setting fashion trends that we were definitely not born with but when it comes down to it, sociopathy and psychopathy both can be inherited genetically as well as being a developmental phenomenon. It's due to this realization that I say people are not as simple as an "either/or." We are a compilation of all things that include both genetics and how we were raised. Without the sum of our parts, we'd be no better than animals. In this way, Darwin was right: we evolved. We are not just nature or nurture but nature and nurture. More importantly, we are human and because of this, we will always be a product of chance beyond what we can comprehend.