Abstract
Throughout these lectures, Vygotsky starts out with an introduction of basic principles, sets out a method, and seeks to formulate the results of his enquiry as laws. In this lecture, he starts out by saying that the study of heredity , which is not to be dissociated from the environment even in a chapter ostensibly devoted to genetics in a narrow sense, will help students materialize the basic principles introduced in the last lecture as abstract statements that can even be applied to molecular water and apply them to pedological problems. He then discusses data from mass studies on monozygotic and dizygotic twins . Finally, he sets us the task of generalizing these results into general laws or propositions.
The title of this lecture in the Korotaeva version used as the basis for this translation is Учение о наследственности и среде в педологии (literally, “the teaching concerning/about heredity and the environment in pedology”). The word учение, or “the teaching” is usually translated as “doctrine”, but in English “doctrinaire” has a rather negative (dogmatic political or religious) connotation, particularly when applied to Soviet writings. For this reason, we have avoided “doctrine” and use the slightly inaccurate term “study” instead. This chapter is concerned with what pedology has to tell us (or teach us) about heredity and the environment—how they can be studied using the pedological method described in the previous lecture. The title was not, apparently, given by Vygotsky (see “Setting the Scene”).
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Notes
- 1.
The original has “pedagogue”, i.e. teacher, educator, instructor. Léopoldoff-Martin assumes this is a transcription error, and that what Vygotsky means to say is that the pedologist is interested in heredity as it impacts development, just as the clinician is interested in how it impacts development and the geneticist and the biologist are interested in the laws themselves. But since Vygotsky is speaking a group of preservice and in-service teachers, it might be that he really does mean that the teacher is interested in how certain “predispositions” or “inclinations” might influence the child’s development (e.g. musical talent, which as Vygotsky points out later, is relatively inborn, at least in comparison with speech). In that case, “pedagogue” would be correct here.
- 2.
What Vygotsky actually says here is наконец, or “finally”. We have translated this, somewhat liberally, as “next” instead, because earlier he said that there would be four “moments” (points) and this is really only point number three. Sure enough, he adds another point “finally and lastly” two paragraphs later. Vygotsky losing track of his numbered moments like this is not that rare, and, along with his frequent questions, this does suggest that a good deal of his lecture is ex tempore, done with minimal notes.
- 3.
Vygotsky is giving these lectures at a dark moment in the development of psychology; in Germany, a new racial psychology has been announced by psychologists that Vygotsky once admired (e.g. Narziss Ach, Felix Krueger, Erik Jaensch, and Eduard Spranger). Perhaps this is why Vygotsky insists upon the importance of the common human endowment in pedology, why he stresses the genetic features which unite human races rather than those that divide them, why he uses his own dark Jewish eyes as an example of the kinds of traits that do not pose problems of interest to the pedologist. And perhaps this is also why he dwells here on confusions raised by the work of Pearson, Peters and Bühler.
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) was the British mathematician who developed modern statistical analysis (the Pearson correlation is named after him). Because, he said, acquired characteristics could not be transmitted to children, and only genetic characteristics were stable, it was a waste of time to try to educate “inferior stock”, because the task would have to be repeated with every generation. Anyway, Pearson argued, “Nordic” white people had become a superior race (by living in a more difficult northern climate than other races) and so they would eventually purify the world of other races by killing them all off. (The inferiority of Jews, according to Pearson, stemmed from their southern ancestry.)
Wilhelm Peters (1880–1963) completed his doctorate on colour perception under Wilhelm Wundt in 1904. He then joined the Würzburg school, where in 1915 he published the work on the correlation of school grades to which Vygotsky refers. Like many other German intellectuals (including Marx and Mendelssohn), Peters was from a Jewish family that had converted to Christianity; this meant that he lost his job during the Nazi years. He went to London and then Istanbul, and returned to Würzburg after the war, where he worked for learning-disadvantaged school children.
Today we know that Vygotsky and the pedologists were being far more scientific to emphasize the lack of variability in genetics. Work by Lewontin and others has demonstrated—using Pearson’s own statistical techniques—that “race” has no real biological basis: for the vast majority of traits, the physical genetic variability within a race is greater than the variability we assume between races (see, for example, Lewontin et al. 1984).
- 4.
This refers to the work of Karl Bühler, which Vygotsky also criticized in his “Preface to Bühler” (1997a: 163–173). Bühler is today best known as a semiotician, but in Vygotsky’s time, he was known as a founder member of the Würzburg School, psychologists led by Max Wertheimer who believed in imageless thinking and resisted Wundt’s ban on introspective data. The Würzburgers later gave rise to the Gestalt, or structuralist, school of psychology. This particular research, as well as Bühler’s account of the work of Peters, is from his 1918 book Die geistige Entwicklung des Kindes.
- 5.
Vygotsky is referring to a set of tests on monozygotic and dizygotic twins organized by the Medico-Genetic Institute in Moscow in the early 1930s, based on similar work by K.J. Holzinger and Cyril Burt. These are described in greater detail by Luria (1979: 81–103). Three linked problems (at least) arise.
In a previous paragraph, Vygotsky suggested that partial resemblance in musical aptitude and musical ability could be assessed in two pairs of twins; it’s not clear how this can be done, nor how this partial resemblance would be made comparable to (presumably less partial) resemblances in language ability; assessing how well twins play piano is very different from assessing how well they speak their mother tongue. Secondly, Vygotsky seems to suggest that when we work with large numbers (e.g. fifty pairs, or perhaps—since he speaks of “93 cases”—one hundred pairs) we can simply score identity as one and dissimilarity as zero—not a very nuanced way to score. Thirdly, Vygotsky seems to equate the assessment of partial resemblance in two pairs of twins in the previous paragraph with the all-or-nothing resemblance in fifty or a hundred pairs in this paragraph. These are two very different kinds of resemblance.
Note, however, that the general method Vygotsky introduces here is still very much in use. So for example, the same method has been used in dizygotic and monozygotic pairs of twins to determine the degree to which sexual orientation is hereditary: the “trait” of gayness correlated 65.8% in monozygotics but only 30.4% in dizyogotics (Whitam and Martin 1993). Similarly, the extent of “agreement” for the so-called “big five” character traits: “neuroticism”, “extroversion”, “agreeableness”, “conscientiousness” and “openness” was between 0.48 and 0.51 for monozygotic twins and between 0.24 and 0.28 for dizygotics (Loehlin 1992).
- 6.
“The text uses “ОБ” (Однояйцевыми Близнецами; that is, Monozygotic Twins) and “ДБ” (Двуяйцевыми Близнецами; that is, “Dizygotic Twins”). We will use “MT” for the former and “DT” for the latter henceforth.
- 7.
It is not clear if the stenographer understands the point Vygotsky is making here. The difference between 0.17 and 0.20 is only 0.03. This is actually less, in absolute terms, than the differences Vygotsky gave earlier for speech and musical ability.
Type of twin
Similarity of speech (coefficient)
Similarity of musical ability (coefficient)
Monozygotic
0.96
0.93
Dizygotic
0.89
0.67
Difference
0.07
0.26
As you can see, the difference between monozygotic and dizygotic twins in speech development is actually. 0.07. So why is the imaginary trait that Vygotsky chooses, which has a difference between monozygotic twins and dizygotic twins of only 0.03, considered to be MORE hereditable?
Notice that the correlations for the imaginary trait are, in absolute terms, very small—only about one fifth or less of the total variance. But in the case of speech, the correlations are very large—more than four-fifths of the total variance. So with speech, the difference only a small proportion of the assessed similarity. But in the case of the imaginary trait, the difference is a much larger proportion of the assessed similarity. This is, as Vygotsky says, “an important difference”.
Of course, we cannot assume that any complex cultural ability is precisely measurable with a single variable. If I want to measure swimming ability, I cannot simply rely on speed; I must also consider duration. It is easy to imagine that speed might be more dependent on practice and thus environment while duration might be more dependent on lung capacity and thus heredity. Vygotsky discusses these problems in some detail below.
- 8.
Just as he did earlier (when he spoke of “Trait A” and “Trait B”), Vygotsky is using the Roman alphabet, not the Russian one (i.e. he uses “A, B, C, D” instead of “А, Б, В, Г, Д”). So the use of “H” (equivalent to “n” in English) is somewhat puzzling—it’s not the letter that follows in either alphabet. Nor is this likely to be a transcription error; in the next paragraph, Vygotsky does exactly the same thing and also omits “I” and “J”. But in the next paragraph, he does point out that there must be a huge leap from a simple, non-dynamic function (such as perfect pitch, which appears to homogenous, unchanging and not teachable) to a complex, dynamic function such as musicality (which is an interaction of many abilities, constantly changing, and very teachable). Perhaps Vygotsky is having a little joke here—the missing letters represent the “gap” in the inheritability of functions as we go from lower functions to higher functions!
- 9.
When Vygotsky says that A = 0.60, he does not mean that this is the coefficient of similarity between twins, monozygotic or dizygotic. He means, as he explained earlier, for a given trait A, MT – DT = 0.60, i.e., the difference between the coefficient of similarity between monozygotic twins and the coefficient of similarity between dizygotic twins is 0.60. So, for example, if dizygotic twins agreed 30 per cent of the time but monozygotics agreed 90 per cent of the time, the difference between the coefficients of similarity would be 0.60, and the trait would be therefore largely hereditary, like eye colour or voice timbre and not like speech, where the difference is (as we saw) only 0.07.
Vygotsky then imagines a whole series, like a mathematical series:
Let f(X) = MT(X) − DT(X). Then: f(A) = 0.60, f(B) = 0.55, f(C) = 0.50, f(D) = 0.45, etc.
As we can see, the difference between functions is getting smaller, and therefore the reliance upon heredity is gradually declining. But Vygotsky says that no such gradual continuum is possible: the “break” between simple, univariate, preformed functions and those that are complex, multivariate and dynamic is qualitative and catastrophic, not quantitative and incremental. On one side, the differences are large (in the tens). On the other, they are small (as we saw with speech). The “rupture” between the two marks the moment where phylogenesis gives way to sociogenesis as the main principle of human progress, the explosive increase of culture we see with human civilizations and their ability to provide food, hygiene and education for their children.
Parents can observe this nonlinearity of human progress with their own eyes and ears. The infant depends a great deal on voice timbre for communication with parents. The toddler depends very little upon it, and instead employs vocabulary and grammar. The transition between the former (which we know is largely hereditary) and the latter (which we know is hardly hereditary at all) is not a gradual one: it is a matter of perhaps two years or eighteen months.
- 10.
Vygotsky (1997b: 20, 38) attributes this to Jennings, who argued that activity is essentially a function of anatomy, and we cannot do things for which we have not yet inherited physical organs. The infusorian can swim because it has cilia. We cannot fly, because we do not have wings. But the Jennings principle does not apply to higher functions, for reasons that are both negative and positive. Negatively, organs are necessary but not sufficient for the development of higher functions. Take, for example, the vocal tract. The shape of the vocal tract is undoubtedly hereditary in nature—that is why women have higher voices than men. But a vocal tract is not enough for the development of speech. Positively, because higher functions are not directly dependent upon the inheritance of organs, functions that are entirely new and quite independent of hereditary tendencies can arise. After all, we do fly, even though we do not have wings.
- 11.
Let the influence of the environment be f(E) and the influence of heredity be f(H). We can express the ratio of environmental influence to hereditary influence as f(E)/f(H).
Now, Vygotsky says that this ratio, f(E)/f(H), is not a constant. It changes. But this is not simply because the influence of the environment increases (say, as when sunlight produces melanin which darkens the colour of a person’s eyes). As we shall see, it sometimes happens that the influence of heredity increases in development (Vygotsky’s example is sexuality, but susceptibility to cancer is another example).
As Vygotsky says, there is something else—something that is neither given at birth nor given by the environment, some new psychological formation which enters development: x[f(E)/f(H)]. Not only that, this new formation “x” changes with each age level. For the moment, Vygotsky just mysteriously refers to it as “something new”.
- 12.
For example, intonation and stress are more obviously influenced by voice timbre , which is more susceptible to hereditary influences. Articulation of vowels and consonants is more environmentally influenced (by which mother tongue you are learning). Intonation and stress are more important in infant proto-language while the articulation of vowels and consonants is more important in grammatical speech and in literacy. Thus, the diminution of hereditary influence is, as Vygotsky says here, an aspect of speech development.
- 13.
Korotaeva notes: Так в стенограмме; that is, “thus in the transcript”, meaning that there is only a number “1” whose meaning in this context is unclear. However, it seems fairly obvious that Vygotsky means the years of adolescence.
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Vygotsky, L.S. (2019). The Study of Heredity and the Environment in Pedology. In: L. S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works. Perspectives in Cultural-Historical Research, vol 7. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-0528-7_3
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