4.5 The Nature–Nurture Debate on Human Behaviour

The poles:• Nature: behaviour flows from biology — genes, hormones, brain; historically hardened into sociobiology and evolutionary psychology; its darkest legal ghost: Lombroso's "born criminal" (positivist criminology) — now discredited, and worth naming in exams precisely to reject it.• Nurture: behaviour flows from environment — socialization, learning, culture; the behaviourist confidence (Watson's boast that he could train any infant into any profession) and Bandura's social learning (we imitate models — which is why media violence matters).The evidence each side holds: twin and adoption studies show substantial heritability of intelligence and temperament (nature) — but also enormous environmental modulation (nurture); isolated-children cases show nurture is a precondition of personhood; neuroscience now studies interaction (even gene expression is environmentally tuned — epigenetics).The settled position (your conclusion): nature supplies capacities and temperaments; nurture supplies the person. The debate is resolved as interaction, not victory.Why a law faculty teaches this (closing paragraph — memorise): every legal institution quietly takes a side in this debate. Juvenile justice assumes malleability (Children's Act 2048 (1992): reform over retribution for the young). Probation, parole and open prisons bet on resocialization; harsh recidivist logic bets on fixed nature. Gender-role assumptions (women's "nature") have been used to justify legal disabilities — and were dismantled (equality clauses; the gender-progressive statutes of the 2074 Codes) once the interactionist view won. Law is…