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Hereditarianism
Hereditarianism is the doctrine or school of thought that heredity plays a significant role in determining human nature and character traits, such as intelligence and personality. Hereditarians believe in the power of genetics to explain human character traits and solve human social and political problems. Hereditarians adopt the view that an understanding of human evolution can extend the understanding of human nature. Overview Social scientist Barry Mehler defines hereditarianism as "the belief that a substantial part of both group and individual differences in human behavioral traits are caused by genetic differences". Hereditarianism is sometimes used as a synonym for biological or genetic determinism, though some scholars distinguish the two terms. When distinguished, biological determinism is used to mean that heredity is the only factor. Supporters of hereditarianism reject this sense of biological determinism for most cases. However, in some cases genetic determinism is ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Environmental Determinism
Environmental determinism (also known as climatic determinism or geographical determinism) is the study of how the physical environment predisposes societies and states towards particular development trajectories. Jared Diamond, Jeffrey Herbst, Ian Morris, and other social scientists sparked a revival of the theory during the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. This "neo-environmental determinism" school of thought examines how geographic and ecological forces influence state-building, economic development, and institutions. Many scholars underscore that this original approach was used to encourage colonialism and eurocentrism, and devalued human agency in non-Western societies, whereas modern figures like Diamond have instead used the approach as an explanation that rejects racism.Gilmartin, M. (2009). "Colonialism/Imperialism". Key concepts in political geography (pp. 115–123). London: SAGE. A history of thought Classical and medieval periods Early theories of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Heredity
Heredity, also called inheritance or biological inheritance, is the passing on of traits from parents to their offspring; either through asexual reproduction or sexual reproduction, the offspring cells or organisms acquire the genetic information of their parents. Through heredity, variations between individuals can accumulate and cause species to evolve by natural selection. The study of heredity in biology is genetics. Overview In humans, eye color is an example of an inherited characteristic: an individual might inherit the "brown-eye trait" from one of the parents. Inherited traits are controlled by genes and the complete set of genes within an organism's genome is called its genotype. The complete set of observable traits of the structure and behavior of an organism is called its phenotype. These traits arise from the interaction of its genotype with the environment. As a result, many aspects of an organism's phenotype are not inherited. For example, suntanned ski ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Richard Herrnstein
Richard Julius Herrnstein (May 20, 1930 – September 13, 1994) was an American psychologist at Harvard University. He was an active researcher in animal learning in the Skinnerian tradition. Herrnstein was the Edgar Pierce Professor of Psychology until his death, and previously chaired the Harvard Department of Psychology for five years. With political scientist Charles Murray, he co-wrote ''The Bell Curve'', a controversial 1994 book on human intelligence. He was one of the founders of the Society for Quantitative Analysis of Behavior. Early life and education Richard Herrnstein was born on 20 May 1930, in New York City, to a family of Hungarian Jewish immigrants; the son of Flora Irene (née Friedman) and Rezso Herrnstein, a housepainter. He was educated at the High School of Music & Art and the City College of New York, receiving a B.A. from the latter in 1952. In 1955, Herrnstein obtained his Ph.D. at Harvard University, with a thesis titled ''Behavioral Consequences of th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Leftist
Left-wing politics describes the range of political ideologies that support and seek to achieve social equality and egalitarianism, often in opposition to social hierarchy. Left-wing politics typically involve a concern for those in society whom its adherents perceive as disadvantaged relative to others as well as a belief that there are unjustified inequalities that need to be reduced or abolished. Left-wing politics are also associated with popular or state control of major political and economic institutions. According to emeritus professor of economics Barry Clark, left-wing supporters "claim that human development flourishes when individuals engage in cooperative, mutually respectful relations that can thrive only when excessive differences in status, power, and wealth are eliminated." Within the left–right political spectrum, ''Left'' and ''Right'' were coined during the French Revolution, referring to the seating arrangement in the French Estates General. Tho ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Liberalism
Liberalism is a political and moral philosophy based on the rights of the individual, liberty, consent of the governed, political equality and equality before the law."political rationalism, hostility to autocracy, cultural distaste for conservatism and for tradition in general, tolerance, and ... individualism". John Dunn. ''Western Political Theory in the Face of the Future'' (1993). Cambridge University Press. . Liberals espouse various views depending on their understanding of these principles. However, they generally support private property, market economies, individual rights (including civil rights and human rights), liberal democracy, secularism, rule of law, economic and political freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, and freedom of religion. Liberalism is frequently cited as the dominant ideology of modern times.Wolfe, p. 23.Adams, p. 11. Liberalism became a distinct movement in the Age of Enlightenment, gaining popularity amon ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Behaviorism
Behaviorism is a systematic approach to understanding the behavior of humans and animals. It assumes that behavior is either a reflex evoked by the pairing of certain antecedent stimuli in the environment, or a consequence of that individual's history, including especially reinforcement and punishment contingencies, together with the individual's current motivational state and controlling stimuli. Although behaviorists generally accept the important role of heredity in determining behavior, they focus primarily on environmental events. Behaviorism emerged in the early 1900s as a reaction to depth psychology and other traditional forms of psychology, which often had difficulty making predictions that could be tested experimentally, but derived from earlier research in the late nineteenth century, such as when Edward Thorndike pioneered the law of effect, a procedure that involved the use of consequences to strengthen or weaken behavior. With a 1924 publication, John ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Conservatism
Conservatism is a cultural, social, and political philosophy that seeks to promote and to preserve traditional institutions, practices, and values. The central tenets of conservatism may vary in relation to the culture and civilization in which it appears. In Western culture, conservatives seek to preserve a range of institutions such as organized religion, parliamentary government, and property rights. Conservatives tend to favor institutions and practices that guarantee stability and evolved gradually. Adherents of conservatism often oppose modernism and seek a return to traditional values, though different groups of conservatives may choose different traditional values to preserve. The first established use of the term in a political context originated in 1818 with François-René de Chateaubriand during the period of Bourbon Restoration that sought to roll back the policies of the French Revolution. Historically associated with right-wing politics, the term ha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nature Versus Nurture
Nature versus nurture is a long-standing debate in biology and society about the balance between two competing factors which determine fate: genetics (nature) and environment (nurture). The alliterative expression "nature and nurture" in English has been in use since at least the Elizabethan period and goes back to medieval French. The complementary combination of the two concepts is an ancient concept ( grc, ἁπό φύσεως καὶ εὐτροφίας). Nature is what people think of as pre-wiring and is influenced by genetic inheritance and other biological factors. Nurture is generally taken as the influence of external factors after conception e.g. the product of exposure, experience and learning on an individual. The phrase in its modern sense was popularized by the Victorian polymath Francis Galton, the modern founder of eugenics and behavioral genetics when he was discussing the influence of heredity and environment on social advancement. Galton was influenced by ''O ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Social Determinism
Social determinism is the theory that social interactions alone determine individual behavior (as opposed to biological or objective factors). A social determinist would only consider social dynamics like customs, cultural expectations, education, and interpersonal interactions as the contributing factors to shape human behavior. Non-social influences, like biology, would be ignored in their contribution towards behavior. Thus, in line with the nature-nurture debate, social determinism is analogous to the 'nurture' side of the argument. Overview Social determinism was studied by the French philosopher Emile Durkheim (1858 - 1917), who was considered the father of social science. Social determinism is most commonly understood in opposition to biological determinism. However, within the media studies discipline, social determinism is understood as the counterpart of technological determinism. Technological determinism is the notion that technological change and development a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Behaviorism
Behaviorism is a systematic approach to understanding the behavior of humans and animals. It assumes that behavior is either a reflex evoked by the pairing of certain antecedent stimuli in the environment, or a consequence of that individual's history, including especially reinforcement and punishment contingencies, together with the individual's current motivational state and controlling stimuli. Although behaviorists generally accept the important role of heredity in determining behavior, they focus primarily on environmental events. Behaviorism emerged in the early 1900s as a reaction to depth psychology and other traditional forms of psychology, which often had difficulty making predictions that could be tested experimentally, but derived from earlier research in the late nineteenth century, such as when Edward Thorndike pioneered the law of effect, a procedure that involved the use of consequences to strengthen or weaken behavior. With a 1924 publication, John ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Blank Slate
''The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature'' is a best-selling 2002 book by the cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker, in which the author makes a case against tabula rasa models in the social sciences, arguing that human behavior is substantially shaped by evolutionary psychological adaptations. The book was nominated for the 2003 Aventis Prizes and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Summary Pinker argues that modern science has challenged three "linked dogmas" that constitute the dominant view of human nature in intellectual life: * the blank slate (the mind has no innate traits)—empiricism * the noble savage (people are born good and corrupted by society)—romanticism * the ghost in the machine (each of us has a soul that makes choices free from biology) Much of the book is dedicated to examining fears of the social and political consequences of his view of human nature: * "the fear of inequality" * "the fear of imperfectibility" * "the fear of determini ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Steven Pinker
Steven Arthur Pinker (born September 18, 1954) is a Canadian-American cognitive psychologist, psycholinguist, popular science author, and public intellectual. He is an advocate of evolutionary psychology and the computational theory of mind. Pinker is the Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, and his academic specializations are visual cognition and developmental linguistics. His experimental subjects include mental imagery, shape recognition, visual attention, children's language development, regular and irregular phenomena in language, the neural bases of words and grammar, as well as the psychology of cooperation and communication, including euphemism, innuendo, emotional expression, and common knowledge. He has written two technical books that proposed a general theory of language acquisition and applied it to children's learning of verbs. In particular, his work with Alan Prince published in 1989 critiqued the connectionist model of how childre ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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