Essay Database

Nature versus nurture is a shorthand expression for debates about the relative importance of an individual's innate nature and experiences ("nurture") in determining or causing physical and behavioral traits. These debates arose from problems associated with reconciling the formalist definitions of classical science and philosophy, with emerging theories and new data. While classical theory was primarily concerned with the line between that which was voluntary (the ego, the self, and the personal will) and the …

…as "nurture" in a contemporary nature versus nurture debate, including one's childhood friends, one's early experiences with television, and one's experience in the womb. Indeed, a substantial source of environmental input to human nature may arise from stochastic variations in prenatal development. Additionally, although childhood experience (especially early childhood experience) is often regarded as more influential in who one becomes than post-childhood experience, a liberal interpretation of "nurture" might count all life experience as "nurture".