Biological Determinism Essay Research Paper Biological Determinism1

Biological Determinism Essay, Research Paper

Biological Determinism

1. According to the author of the article “All in the Genes.”, there is no

intrinsic causality between genetics and intelligence. The author analyses

different aspects of biological determinism, and supplies many examples, which

illustrate aspects of this problem that are being discussed since the time

when these ideas became popular. He does not agree with biological determinist

that the intellectual performance of a person depends on genes inherited from

his parents. There are a lot of different theories about intellectual

capabilities. All these theories reflect different points of views, depending on

the period of time the authors of these theories lived.

The author argues for the theory that in the nineteenth century ,

artificial barriers in social hierarchy prevented people from achieving higher

intellectual performance. In the end of XX century, in most places these

barriers were removed by the democratic processes, and nothing artificial can

stand between the natural sorting process and social status of the people. These

changes can not be considered as historical because the age of democracy is just

two hundred years , and the time when inequality between classes and between

people was a natural situation is almost as long as the history of the world .

The author insists that there is no connection between environmental

differences and genetics. In support of his idea the author state that any

Canadian student can perform better in mathematics than some ancient professors

of mathematics. The author comes to the conclusion that changes in a cultural

environment are the main factor that determines level of intellectual

performance, not inherited combination of parent’s genes . He argues that

genetic differences that appear in one environment may easily disappear in

another. A theory that twins were raised in different social conditions will

have the same level of intellectual performance because identical genetics

constitution was used by the ideologist of biological determinism. The author

rejects this theory because from his point of view, all these cases cannot be

considered as always reliable on a close look, in most cases, twins were

raised by the members of the same family or in other words, not in a diametrical

opposite level of society. The author believes that there is no convincing

measure of the role of genes in influencing human behavioural variation.

During the argumentation of questions of biological determinism, the

author supports his idea with numerous examples. He gives examples of supporters

of bio determinism and outlines that these examples are not reliable. One of the

fallacies of biological determinism is the result of IQ testing. According to

some scientist only 20% of performance depend on environment and other 80%

depend on genetic variations. The author state that this is completely

fallacious because there is no connection between the variation that can be

ascribed as genetic differences and whether an IQ performance was affected by

environment and by how much. IQ measures little more than a person’ s ability

to take a test. Scores increase dramatically as a person is trained or

familiarised with a test. It means that an IQ level does not depend on the

intellectual abilities of parents but on the manner of studying and preparation

that can be considered as environmental changes.

For the author, there is a casual relationship between genetic and

environmental differences. He gives us an example of a fruitflies with more

bristles under the wing on the left side than on the right side. He says that

these differences are caused by random chances of cell during growth and

development and that every organism is a unique combination of genes and

environmental random chances. Another fallacy can be illustrated by the

statement provided by the author, which is built on the ideology of biological

determinism: “. . . if most of the variation in, say, intelligence among

individuals is a consequence of variation among their genes, then manipulating

the environment will not make much differences”. The author argues that the

proportion of variation in genes is not fixed properly, but one that varies from

environment to environment. So, the author of the article provides many examples

and rejects the fact that the intelligence is only affected by genes.

2.We can characterises the ideology of biological determinism as an

explanation of social, cultural and physical inadequacy among people based on

their inborn biological differences, which are passed along from parents to

children. Scientists who support the theory of biological determinism insist

that all people differ in their fundamental abilities because of some innate

differences, such as genetic constitution. This id

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