Greetings again, koan. Terrific quotes. A couple of quick thoughts.
Those quotes reflect a certain position in the debate some time back. And that position was held, most prominently, by psychologists focusing on cognition. As I recall, the argument was grounded in a variety of ways. But generally in animal studies. Critics, generally, social psychologists, sociologists, and the like, bored in on the degree to which the results of animal studies, concerning cognition, were generalizable to humans. Lots of arguments in that space.
The most prominent studies I recall were twin studies, in which the twins were raised in different homes. I've lost track of that literature over the last couple of decades but would be surprised if the fundamentals of it have changed.
My guess is the literature has now broken into some contentious and reasonably complicated sub categories. Just off the top of the head I suspect those subcategories come from the behaviors to be explained. Even to use the category "gender behaviors" probably points to a rather large range of literatures.
In addition, since researchers tend to get committed to beginning points (and change only with over whelming evidence--a la Kuhn), ones that are predicates for research rather than the object, I would expect to find somewhat contentious debates around nature/nurture issues.
You can see some of this latter in the wikipedia article on the topic. en.wikipedia.org. And the degree to which some sections have caveat comments.
I don't see this as a place to lay down heavy markers. |
