Reputed Changes in Social Scientists' Sympathies Regarding the Nature-Nurture Controversy: An Exploratory Comparison

In: Politics and the life sciences: PLS ; a journal of political behavior, ethics, and policy, Band 2, Heft 2, S. 194-197

Abstract

Probably the most enduring question throughout the history of the social sciences pertains to how much human social behavior is a product of evolutionary, genetic, nonsocial, "natural" sorts of variables as opposed to learned sociocultural, environmental, "nurturing" variables (Hammond, 1983). Regardless of where individual social scientists themselves happen to have settled on this issue, many have offered an opinion about the prevailing position of social scientists generally on this question at various points in social science history. The present study compares these opinions, especially as they pertain to the twentieth century.