"Geneticism" redirects here. For the profession, see Geneticist.
Biological determinism, also known as genetic determinism,[1] is the belief that human behaviour is directly controlled by an individual's genes or some component of their physiology, generally at the expense of the role of the environment, whether in embryonic development or in learning.[2] Genetic reductionism is a similar concept, but it is distinct from genetic determinism in that the former refers to the level of understanding, while the latter refers to the supposedly causal role of genes.[3] Biological determinism has been associated with movements in science and society including eugenics, scientific racism, and the debates around the heritability of IQ,[4] the basis of sexual orientation,[5] and sociobiology.[6]
In 1892, the German evolutionary biologist August Weismann proposed in his germ plasm theory that heritable information is transmitted only via germ cells, which he thought contained determinants (genes). The English polymath Francis Galton, supposing that undesirable traits such as club foot and criminality were inherited, advocated eugenics, aiming to prevent supposedly defective people from breeding. The American physician Samuel George Morton and the French physician Paul Broca attempted to relate the cranial capacity (internal skull volume) to skin colour, intending to show that white people were superior. Other workers such as the American psychologists H. H. Goddard and Robert Yerkes attempted to measure people's intelligence and to show that the resulting scores were heritable, again to demonstrate the supposed superiority of people with white skin.[4]
Galton popularized the phrase nature and nurture, later often used to characterize the heated debate over whether genes or the environment determined human behaviour. Scientists such as behavioural geneticists now see it as obvious that both factors are essential, and that they are intertwined, especially through the mechanisms of epigenetics.[7][8] The American biologist E. O. Wilson, who founded the discipline of sociobiology based on observations of animals such as social insects, controversially suggested that its explanations of social behaviour might apply to humans.[6]
^de Melo-Martín, Inmaculada (2003). "When Is Biology Destiny? Biological Determinism and Social Responsibility". Philosophy of Science. 70 (5): 1184–1194. doi:10.1086/377399. JSTOR 10.1086/377399. S2CID 224834276. I will use here 'biology' and 'genetics' ... interchangeably ... because this is the way they are used in most of the literature I analyze here ... Critics accuse those who use biology to explain every possible human trait of presupposing the truth of biological or genetic determinism.
^"Biological determinism". Oxford Reference. 2021. Retrieved 26 September 2021. The idea that an individual's personality or behaviour is caused by their particular genetic endowment, rather than by social or cultural factors—by nature rather than nurture.
^Hayes, Nicky; Stratton, Peter (2017). A Student's Dictionary of Psychology and Neuroscience. Routledge. p. 138. ISBN 978-1351803199.
^ abCite error: The named reference AllenReview was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^Lewontin, Richard; Rose, Steven; Kamin, Leon (1984). Not in Our Genes: Biology, Ideology and Human Nature. Pantheon Books. pp. 131–163.
^ abCite error: The named reference May 1976 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^Powledge, Tabitha M. (2011). "Behavioral Epigenetics: How Nurture Shapes Nature". BioScience. 61 (8): 588–592. doi:10.1525/bio.2011.61.8.4.
^Moore, David S. (2003). The Dependent Gene: The Fallacy of Nature Vs. Nurture. Henry Holt. ISBN 978-0-8050-7280-8.
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Biologicaldeterminism, also known as genetic determinism, is the belief that human behaviour is directly controlled by an individual's genes or some...
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for their situation (which is often seen as predetermined due to biologicaldeterminism, evolutionary genetics or a rigged game), a sense of futility and...
theological determinism challenge metaphysical libertarianism with ideas of destiny and fate, and biological, cultural and psychological determinism feed the...
Strict biologicaldeterminism is no longer taken seriously (later in his career even Lombroso recognized that not all criminals were biological throwbacks)...
determinism. The term predeterminism is also frequently used in the context of biology and heredity, in which case it represents a form of biological...
of the statistical methods and cultural motivations underlying biologicaldeterminism, the belief that "the social and economic differences between human...
emotional and behavioral levels. It contrasts with genetic determinism, the theory that biologically inherited traits and the environmental influences that...
geneticist, a neurobiologist, and a psychologist." They criticize biologicaldeterminism and reductionism, and state that they share a commitment to the...
oppression because of their physiology, creating an example of biologicaldeterminism. In darker stories, this results in non-consensual or dubiously...
synonym for biological or genetic determinism, though some scholars distinguish the two terms. When distinguished, biologicaldeterminism is used to mean...
that critics have been overly swayed by politics and a fear of biologicaldeterminism, accusing among others Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Lewontin of...
Biology (Editor) 1981, Allison & Busby, ISBN 0850314259 Against BiologicalDeterminism (Editor), 1982, Schocken, ISBN 0805281126 Not in Our Genes (With...
biology to human nature, but reframed the debate as "biological potentiality vs. biologicaldeterminism." Gould stated that the human brain allows for a wide...
biologically distinct subcategories" and that it "exposes the concept of 'racial purity'' as scientifically meaningless." Bias Biologicaldeterminism...
a family to those who were biological siblings. A correlation of p=0.05 was found between the personalities of biological siblings and of other family...
media is that I endorse a primitive biologicaldeterminism. Woman Hating clearly repudiates any biologicaldeterminism; so does Our Blood (1976), especially...
Environmental determinism (also known as climatic determinism or geographical determinism) is the study of how the physical environment predisposes societies...
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Resident Evil. Ableism – Discrimination against disabled people Biologicaldeterminism – Theory of genetic influence Culling – Process of segregating organisms...
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