Nature versus nurture

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Nature versus nurture is a long-standing debate in biology, psychology, and social sciences about whether human individuals receive more influence from their genetic inheritance and biology ("nature") or from their environment and upbringing ("nurture"). In other words, the disagreement involves whether a person's disposition, behavior, personality, sense of self, etc. is more determined by their internal genetically and biologically inherited traits or by external factors after conception, e.g. their exposure, life experience, and learning. The phrase in its modern sense was popularized by the Victorian polymath Francis Galton, the modern founder of eugenics and behavioral genetics when he was discussing the influence of heredity and environment on social advancement. Galton was influenced by On the Origin of Species written by his half-cousin, the evolutionary biologist Charles Darwin. The complementary combination of the two concepts is an ancient concept (Ancient Greek: ἁπό φύσεως...

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