Well . . . since this is sorta related to what I wanna do, probably should drop my view . . . :
It's pretty well documented that genetic expression can help control many aspects of biology - even as far as behavior (alcoholism) and possibly even personality (schizophrenia, other diseases [loose connection sorry]) on a different level. However, for most of these, the gene isn't enough - there has to be some form of external stimuli to cause gene expression.
For example, if you look at genetic predisposition to alcoholism, well it's prett basic: if you never have a drink, it's fairly difficult to become alcoholic. If you're predisposed to addiction, in no way is it for sure that if you drink you'll be alcoholic. Also, you can acquire the disease w/out any genetic predisposition - although statistically it occurs less.
So . . . i guess the point is that I tend to extend this assay to most forms of nature/nurture arguments: certainly nature plays a gigantic role in every facet of a person, but expression of the genetics of the thing relies heavily on the 'nurture' side.
A good theoretical assay for this would be the fact that so many people end up thinking how similar they are to their parents when they've grown (ie the old "you sound like your mother" thing, etc). Combine this then with the fact that many biological children look like one or the other parent; in how many cases does this child ACT like the parent they more closely resemble? The connection isn't 100%, or 50%, or 0% - rather, you can perhaps loosely tie it in so that the parental influence (environment) combines with parental influence (biological) to create a hodgepodge (intensive technical lab term) of outcomes, all showing various degrees of these influences expressed - maybe the 'dominent' personality traits came from the other parent, or maybe just the fact that developmental years were spent with both parents as the primary environment, etc.
Ok i'm done - tough to express this viewpoint in the GC medium; hopefully this didn't suck!
Rob
|