The Nature vs Nurturedebate or controversy- Human Psychology

Human Behaviours, Ideas and Feelings

InnateOR

LearnedThe Nature Vs Nurture Debate

Most Enduring in the Field of Psychology

17th Century French Philosopher Rene Descartes : Ideas are in born

British Philosophers Thomas Hobbs and John Locke: Experience fully contributes to our behavioural development

Francis GaltonEnglish men of Science “their Nature and Nurture” 1874

Influence of genetics and the environment

A convenient jingle of words....Nature is all we bring with ourselves into the world

Nurture is every influence that affects us after birth

Galton on Scientific genius – largely nature and inherited

Empirical Nurture approach has prevailed since.

Has the argument been settled?

Key Insights into General Human Nature

PlatoSocratesPythagoras evenShakespeare

Emerson

"...man is a bundle of relations, a knot of roots,whose flower and fruitage is the world..."

Are we Materialistic?SpiritualEthnicIntellectual capacityMotivation

Could it be that Nurture complements

Nature and that Nature's gift

of rich Human Potential is realised through socialisation

and education?

ARE: Human Beings consciously and unconsciously nurtured by their families, and consciously and unconsciously educated and socialised by their societies, into following socially accepted routes towards living their individual lives as simultaneously materialistic, spiritual, ethnic and intellectual fellow citizens?