What Is New About the Nature vs. Nurture Debate?
In 1975 Harvard biologist Edward O. Wilson published a textbook entitled Sociobiology: The New Synthesis. This book linked new theoretical advances in the study of evolution and genetics with the field of animal behavior in an attempt to construct a theoretical framework for the study of how social behavior has evolved in a variety of animals. In his provocative last chapter Wilson turns his attention to humans. The controversy over whether human behavior especially complex behaviors that must surely owe at least some of their expression to culture follows the same rules as does behavior of other species is still alive and well. With your introduction to animal behavior and your understanding of the complex relationships between genes and environment, you are ready to be introduced to some of the important issues that arise when we attempt to investigate humans in the same way that we investigate other species. Studies of human behavior take two seemingly separate but related forms. On
