Nature vs. Nurture and the "Beguiling Simplicity" of Certainty
The first rule of social science is "check yourself before you wreck yourself"
If my years of academic training had a central theme, that theme would be: “don't be so sure.” It is a fundamental doctrine in social science to hold your attachment to your arguments lightly, because you simply never know what you don't know. That doesn't mean that you abandon the search for truth, or that you avoid making forceful arguments. It just means that you should do your best not to conflate your theory with your identity. As The Dude reminds us in “The Big Lebowski,” sometimes new shit comes to light, man. It requires a special kind of hubris to imagine that there is nothing significant left to discover.
Very early on, as a little baby grad student learning the ropes of academic critique, I submitted a paper to my advisor that claimed some author or another's argument was “absurd on its face.” I was very pleased with my rhetorical panache, and expected it would please my advisor as well. He, however, was not having it, and it gave me a good lesson in engaging with my intellectual opponents with respect. I do not and cannot know if they are absolutely wrong any more than I can know if I am absolutely right. I can certainly have strong opinions about it, and make my case. But once you abandon mutual regard and basic respect toward those with whom you disagree, academic discourse deteriorates into something that looks like, well, the website formally known as Twitter. Or worse.
When we are over-confident in our beliefs about the world, we risk making our blind spots permanent. Academia, unfortunately, all too often rewards this. Many social science departments—my own included—have become ideological war zones, where each faction regards the others with contempt and dismissal. Many professors regard their graduate students as little more than new recruits to their cult of personality, and indoctrinate them with a robust hatred of The Other accordingly. My advisors, while of course imperfect and subject to their own biases, nevertheless did their best to persistently caution me against intellectual arrogance and ideological capture. They called it out in my work and took responsibility for it in their own.
The academic conversation around nature vs. nurture has, very unfortunately, devolved into precisely the kind of hyper-confident, rhetorical absolutism that characterizes the worst corners of social science research. Too many voices in the “debate” seem to want only to claim finality and declare the case closed when, in reality, the questions are far from settled.
As I explain in the podcast, it is undeniable that something—or, more likely, more than one somethings—is causing identical twins to be more alike than fraternal twins on virtually every trait that you can shake a stick at. A relatively uncomplicated hypothesis that this remarkably consistent and predictable finding is 100% down to “the genetic code” is an obvious and completely plausible interpretation. But for that story to be true, we would also need to accept a purely mechanistic and linear model of human development—where DNA really does operate like a “blueprint” that more or less rigidly dictates the expression of traits. And not everyone—myself included—is willing to agree to those fundamental assumptions.
I don't need to elaborate on the sordid history and misapplication of genetic determinism here. But I will say that this is a debate where the stakes are unusually high. In political science, if one faction thinks the institutionalists are idiots because what really matters is obviously culture or obviously geography, the damage done is probably going to be limited to the civility of the department, or some awkward encounters at academic conferences. But that is simply not the case when it comes to the question of why we are who we are and why we do the things we do. Those questions, and how we answer them, require the deepest level of reflection and the greatest amount of intellectual humility that we can possibly manage.
You can watch my newest podcast, “The Mismeasure of Meaning: Nature, Nurture, and Nuance” here, or find it on iTunes here.
P.S.—It's not too late to join my book club and study group on Nonviolent Communication, which I told you about in my last email. Our meetings are on Monday evenings at 6pm Eastern, and we'll keep the group going for at least 14 weeks (one for each chapter of the book by Marshall Rosenberg.) If you're interested in learning about how to be a more compassionate and effective listener and communicator, consider joining via the Collective.
P.P.S.—I never want finances to be the reason that people don't feel able to participate in any of my groups or coaching. I'm happy to work out sliding scale pricing for everything I offer. Just reach out if that is a concern.