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When humans are brought into existence by the copulative act of their parents, they inherit a complete “set of instructions” (53) with which to build a body to inhabit. Edward O. Wilson presents this fact and poses a question: “to what extent does the wiring of the neurons, so undeniably encoded in the genes, preordain the directions that social development will follow?” (55). This is the proper arena in which to determine the precise limits of genetic determinism, the reality that an individual’s genetic makeup is constitutive of their existence from the first moment of life.
At one extreme would be the determinism that governs the life of a creature like the mosquito, “confined to a single channel, running from a given set of genes to the corresponding single predestined pattern of behavior” (55). The life of a mosquito is pure genetics, nothing else. At the other extreme would be a kind of angelic existence, finding no roots in the material whatsoever, an infinitely malleable existence determined by the power of will. Human nature, as experience and scientifically verifiable data show, falls in the middle of these extremes. It exhibits restricted characteristics—such as the predisposition to be right-handed, or the predisposition to become an alcoholic or develop breast cancer—but not behavior predetermined by genetics to such a degree so as to remove freedom or development.
One’s environment plays an important role in the development of particular traits, behaviors, and even disorders (such as schizophrenia). Wilson speaks of how “in the relatively simple categories of behavior we inherit a capacity for certain traits, and a bias to learn one or another of those available” (60). Certain physical traits are inherited about which nothing can be done (apart from surgery), just as other genetic traits are set in stone (blood type, male-pattern baldness, etc.). When it comes to behavior, however, an individual inherits the capacity for certain traits and behaviors. Language may be the best example of inherited capacity—not the inheritance of a specific language, but “the human mind [being] innately structured so as to string words together in certain arrangements and not others” (63). Such development of language is unique to human nature, and everything about neurobiological research indicates that it is innate to the human mind to such a degree that it can be visually demonstrated with the help of medical imaging technology.
Every animal species has the capacity “to learn certain stimuli, barred from learning others, and neutral with respect to still others” (65). It is part of human nature to learn determined behaviors at rates that can rarely be altered; unless suspended or delayed by developmental abnormalities, the ages and speeds at which children learn to crawl, walk, talk, and form complex sentences are essentially unalterable and predictable. Furthermore, people are predisposed to learn and participate in behaviors that will result in the greatest chance of their own advantageous traits being passed on via “sexual pairbonding” (69).
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By Edward O. Wilson