The Question of Human Nature

The question of human nature has haunted mankind for years: are we born with genetically predisposed characteristics and behaviors, or are we born as blank slates, our characteristics and behaviors to be determined by the culture and environment we are raised in? Though there is no way yet to know for certain whether nature or nurture plays the stronger role in our development, it is currently more widely accepted that "the influences of class and culture far outweigh the weaker predispositions of our genetic constitution" (Gould, Stephen Jay. Ever Since Darwin: Reflections in Natural History, p. 237).

Because of the large brain size found in Homo sapiens, which evolved gradually throughout the duration of other hominid species, human beings are "endowed with sufficient logic and memory to substitute non programmed learning for direct specification as the ground of social behavior" (Gould, p. 257). That is to say that while animals are born with certain ingrained behaviors, such as baby chicks that are born already knowing the difference between a chicken hawk and a falcon so that they will recognize their natural predator, human babies are born knowing only how to cry, breathe, and nurse. During the extended childhood, the child will participate in social learning, where many behaviors are learned through observation and imitation of those around them. Just as a young chimp will learn to use a blade of grass to fish for termites (Goodall, Jane. Through a Window: My Thirty Years with the Chimpanzees of Gombe, p. 19) or to do a charging display (p. 44), a young human will learn to speak and share.