Abstract
In this chapter, I analyze how the effort to bring together “nature” and “nurture” has put forward “plasticity” as a key concept in biology. While the notion of plasticity appeared in the field of genetics in the early twentieth century as a solution to the debate between “nature” and “nurture”—the notion of plasticity proved a key concept in articulating those genes and environment; in social science, the opposition seems to persist (probably because the meaning of plasticity itself has not remained stable or uncontroversial among the different fields of biology). In order to understand the issues raised by the nature-nurture debate, it therefore appears necessary to provide a comprehensive view of the history of plasticity within the debate.
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Notes
- 1.
E-Study Guide for: Political and Civic Leadership: A Reference Handbook: Political Science, Political Science. Cram101 Textbook Reviews, 2012. https://store.kobobooks.com/fr-fr/ebook/political-and-civic-leadership-a-reference-handbook
- 2.
Galton also referred to adoption studies (including studies on inter-racial adoption) in order to distinguish the effects of inheritance from the effects of the environment. Note that Plomin et al. (ed.) mentioned that the first adoption study, which investigated IQ, was reported in 1924 by Theis (Plomin et al. 2008, 76).
- 3.
From the conference of Gayon, J., “Beyond genetics or beyond heredity? A retrospective look at 20th Cy biology”, Workshop “How can we redefine inheritance beyond the gene-centered approach?”, Paris, Oct. 2–3, 2014, Org. F. Merlin & G. Pontarotti.
- 4.
First in a conference in 1910 in front of the American Society of Naturalists and then published in 1911 in The American Naturalist.
- 5.
Darwin had developed what he called “a provisional hypothesis”—the theory of pangenesis—in the Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication, which was quickly rejected. This theory implied that the whole of parental organisms participate in heredity. He speculated that inheritance relied on tiny particles he called gemmules that could be transmitted from parent to offspring. He thought that cells formed atomic sized gemmules that would diffuse and aggregate in the reproductive organs.
- 6.
See Sarkar 1999, for details concerning this historical episode.
- 7.
Theodosius Dobzhansky was a central figure in the field of evolutionary biology for his work in shaping the unifying modern evolutionary synthesis.
- 8.
Nilsson’s Ehle’s view about plasticity differed from his successor, the geneticist Anthony Bradshaw, who will popularize the notion of phenotypic plasticity in the mid-1960s (for more concerning Bradshaw, see Nicoglou 2015).
- 9.
Note the influence of Herbert Spencer, The Principles of Biology vol. 2 about the nerve and his doctrine of “physiological units.”
- 10.
August Weismann’s main contribution is the germ plasm theory, according to which (in a multicellular organism) inheritance only takes place by means of the germ cells—the gametes. Other cells of the body—the somatic cells—do not function as agents of heredity.
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Acknowledgments
I am grateful to Maurizio Meloni, Steeves Demazeux, and Jane Kassis for feedback on earlier drafts of this article. This work was supported financially by the “Who am I?” Laboratory of Excellence (ANR-11-LABX- 0071) funded by the French government through its “Investments for the Future” Program operated by the French National Research Agency (ANR) under grant no ANR-11-IDEX-0005-02.
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Nicoglou, A. (2018). The Concept of Plasticity in the History of the Nature-Nurture Debate in the Early Twentieth Century. In: Meloni, M., Cromby, J., Fitzgerald, D., Lloyd, S. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Biology and Society. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-52879-7_5
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