Nature vs Nurture Debate

People have known for ages that you’re hair color, or you’re skin color, maybe you’re eye color is genetic; it comes from your parents. That’s the Nature. The Nurture in the debate is how you obtained personality traits such as intelligence or aggressiveness, or if a child is a prodigy singer or skilled mathematician, did these things come from your parents, or were you put in environments which lead to your abilities? Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin’s, first came up with this question; he is known to be as one of the most original Victorians. He used groups of identical twins in many of his studies, which was very valuable for his debate of Nature vs. Nurture. A few topics about the debate are aggressiveness, rage, intelligence, hobbies, ticks etc. Some people say that it is genetic; others say that it is because of the environment in which you were born. The overall belief of this is that it is a little bit of both. You can be put into the best learning environment but a little bit of genetics are involved in someone who is very intelligent, or if you have a gene of aggressiveness, your environment also affects this as well. I believe that this debate is a little bit of both, but mostly environmental. If you have an incredibly intelligent gene, but are born into poverty and work in a field every day, you probably won’t develop the great mind that you were born to develop.

Sources:

http://www.victorianweb.org/science/galton.html

http://genealogy.about.com/cs/geneticgenealogy/a/nature_nurture.htm