Tabery - Beyond versus : the struggle to understand the interaction of nature and nurture

Beyond Versus

Life and Mind: Philosophical Issues in Biology and Psychology

Kim Sterelny and Robert A. Wilson, Series Editors

Beyond Versus: The Struggle to Understand the Interaction of Nature and Nurture, James Tabery, 2014

Investigating the Psychological World: Scientific Method in the Behavioral Sciences, Brian D. Haig, 2014

Evolution in Four Dimensions: Genetic, Epigenetic, Behavioral, and Symbolic Variation in the History of Life, revised edition, Eva Jablonka and Marion J. Lamb, 2014

Cooperation and its Evolution, Kim Sterelny, Richard Joyce, Brett Calcott, and Ben Fraser, editors, 2013

Ingenious Genes: How Gene Regulation Networks Evolve to Control Development, Roger Sansom, 2011

Yuck! The Nature and Moral Significance of Disgust, Daniel Kelly, 2011

Laws, Mind, and Free Will, Steven Horst, 2011

Perplexities of Consciousness, Eric Switzgebel, 2011

Humanitys End: Why We Should Reject Radical Enhancement, Nicholas Agar, 2010

Color Ontology and Color Science, Jonathan Cohen and Mohan Matthen, editors, 2010

The Extended Mind, Richard Menary, editor, 2010

The Native Mind and the Cultural Construction of Nature, Scott Atran and Douglas Medin, 2008

Describing Inner Experience? Proponent Meets Skeptic, Russell T. Hurlburt and Eric Schwitzgebel, 2007

Evolutionary Psychology as Maladapted Psychology, Robert C. Richardson, 2007

The Evolution of Morality, Richard Joyce, 2006

Evolution in Four Dimensions: Genetic, Epigenetic, Behavioral, and Symbolic Variation in the History of Life, Eva Jablonka and Marion J. Lamb, 2005

Molecular Models of Life: Philosophical Papers on Molecular Biology, Sahotra Sarkar, 2005

The Mind Incarnate, Lawrence A. Shapiro, 2004

Organisms and Artifacts: Design in Nature and Elsewhere, Tim Lewens, 2004

Seeing and Visualizing: Its Not What You Think, Zenon W. Pylyshyn, 2003

Evolution and Learning: The Baldwin Effect Reconsidered, Bruce H. Weber and David J. Depew, editors, 2003

The New Phrenology: The Limits of Localizing Cognitive Processes in the Brain, William R. Uttal, 2001

Cycles of Contingency: Developmental Systems and Evolution, Susan Oyama, Paul E. Griffiths, and Russell D. Gray, editors, 2001

Coherence in Thought and Action, Paul Thagard, 2000

Beyond Versus

The Struggle to Understand the Interaction of Nature and Nurture

James Tabery

The MIT Press
Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, England

2014 Massachusetts Institute of Technology

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available

ISBN 978-0-262-02737-3 (hardcover : alk. paper)

ISBN 978-0-262-32415-1 (retail e-book)

For Mom and Dad

Preface

Every book has a nature, and a nurture.

Its nature is that germinal idea, that nascent inclination to tell a story. The germinal idea for this book sprung from my fascination with the persistence of the nature/nurture debate. On the face of it, the nature/nurture debate is a scientific debate, and so it should be a debate about verified facts and empirical evidence. But if facts and evidence were all there is to the story, then two scientists (or two disciplines of scientists) should be able to look at the same data and reach the same conclusion. The persistence of the nature/nurture debate obviously suggests there is more to this story than just that. So what then is it? My goal was to expose the underlying philosophical disagreements that could lead two people (or two disciplines) to look at the same data about genes and the environment and reach very different conclusions. These disagreements involve disputes about what certain concepts mean, debates about how explanation works in science, arguments about what methodologies supply those explanations, and controversies about the ethical implications of the conclusions. My nascent inclination was to draw on the tools of the historian of science, the philosopher of science, and the bioethicist to disentangle these underlying disagreements so as to make room for disputants who were once talking past one another to meet on common ground.

A books nurture includes all the people who nourished and shaped that germinal idea. Fortunately for me, this book was nurtured by others for close to a decade. A number of advisors, mentors, colleagues, friends, and family gave graciously of themselves to discuss these issues with me, read versions of this material, and provide me with invaluable feedback: Garland Allen, Kevin Amidon, Rebecca Anderson, Andr Ariew, Lisa Aspinwall, Margaret Battin, Teresa Blankenmeyer Burke, Jim Bogen, Mark Borrello, Jeffrey Botkin, Ingo Brigandt, Samuel Brown, Teneille Brown, Gretchen Case, Carl Craver, Thomas Cunningham, Lindley Darden, Stephen Downes, Linda Carr-Lee Faix, Leslie Francis, Justin Garson, James Giordano, Paul Griffiths, Matthew Haber, Andrew Hamilton, Jonathan Hodge, Leslie Hogben, Eric Hutton, Annie Jamieson, Jonathan Kaplan, Brian Keeley, Maria Kronfeldner, James Lennox, Alan Love, Peter Machamer, Edouard Machery, Ron Mallon, Lucas Matthews, Erika Milam, Elijah Millgram, Sandra Mitchell, Lex Newman, John Norton, Robert Olby, Erik Parens, Lisa Parker, Laurence Perbal, Monika Piotrowska, Kathryn Plaisance, Anya Plutynski, Michael Pogue-Geile, Richard Purcell, Gregory Radick, Chris Renwick, Erin Rothwell, Susan Sample, Kenneth Schaffner, Thomas Schenkenberg, Jonah Schupbach, Jeffrey Schwartz, David Steffes, Jacob Stegenga, Karola Stotz, Omri Tal, Blake Vernon, C. Kenneth Waters, Mark Wicclair, Robert Wilson, and especially my wifeDawn-Marie Tabery. I am especially grateful to Kenneth Schaffner at the University of Pittsburgh and Gregory Radick and Annie Jamieson at the University of Leeds for arranging to have students and colleagues go through an early version of the manuscript with a fine-toothed comb; I owe an additional debt to University of Utah students in my 2012 philosophy of science graduate seminar for doing the same. I also benefited from conversations or correspondence with a number of the scientists whose work is profiled in this book, including Avshalom Caspi, Roderick Cooper, Gilbert Gottlieb, K. Paige Harden, Kenneth Kendler, Terrie Moffitt, David Moore, Robert Plomin, Michael Rutter, and Daniel Weinberger. Thanks also to Pamela Speh for designing and creating figure 5.3. My research for this book was supported by the Tanner Humanities Center (University of Utah, 2013).

I am also grateful to the numerous publishers, archivists, and individuals who have given me permission to reproduce figures, correspondence, and previously unpublished material. Leslie Hogben gave me permission to quote from correspondence from Lancelot Hogben, archived at the University of Birmingham. The University of Adelaide gave me permission to quote from correspondence from R. A. Fisher, archived at the University of Adelaide. Cambridge University Press allowed me to reproduce figure 2.1, which was first published in Fisher and Mackenzie (1923), Studies in Crop Variation, II, The Journal of Agricultural Science 13: 311320. The American Philosophical Society Library granted me permission to quote from correspondence from Richard Lewontin and Theodosius Dobzhansky, archived at the American Philosophical Society Library. Elsevier gave me permission to reproduce figures in chapter 3, which were first published in Lewontin (1974), Annotation: The Analysis of Variance and the Analysis of Causes, American Journal of Human Genetics