Mister Bean
Offline
• • •
Upload & Sell: Off
|
I'm enjoying this discussion. Even if, in the end, we are probably going to have to agree to disagree on this.
I understand your sensitivity towards the idea of eugenics. However, I am not convinced that the concept of natural aptitude has to end in eugenics. I think diversity of aptitude is something to be celebrated and am glad there are people out there that intuitively understand things I don't.
I'm familiar with the concept of social determinism, and even mentioned it when I said that it could be the environment in which one is raised. I agree, it is almost certainly a factor in determining someone's aptitude in a certain area, and so are genetics.
Lets use IQ as an example. Would you disagree that some people have a higher or lower IQ than others? We could say IQ is an aptitude for the ability to reason, plan, solve problems or think abstractly. It's a controversial subject, and the ability to do well on the test is going to depend in large part on familiarity with the subjects of the test (be they math, language, or symbols) and the language in which they are delivered, however, it is scientifically testable. On a range of 0 to 1, where 0 means that genetics have no influence on a trait, and 1 where all variation of a trait is dependent on genetics, correlation between genetics and IQ has been estimated to be between .4 and .8. No matter which end of the spectrum you look at, a certain percentage of that aptitude is attributable to social determination and a certain percentage is attributable to genetics.
I have no idea where the first photographs I took are, probably in the bag of undeveloped film laying on the floor of my mother's closet. Surely the ones that I take now are better. The improvement in quality comes from practice, interest in the subject, studying other forms of art like drawing and painting, lots of reading, and aptitude. In photography I feel that I have an average level of aptitude and my level of aptitude has remained the same while my talent has improved. Of course if I hadn't put forth all that effort to improve, my photography wouldn't be any better than it was then. I'm not saying the opposite at all. Only that if two people with the same level of photographic skill wanted to improve their photography, and both put forth the same level of effort, using the same resources to learn, the one with greater aptitude would improve more quickly.
I just did some quick reading about the research done by Sheldrake on morphic fields. I admit, I probably haven't read enough to really be sure, but from what I have seen so far, it appears to fall into the same category of pseudo-science as things like The Secret (the law of attraction) and What The Bleep Do We Know (quantum physics and consciousness). They all put forth arguments that appear to be scientifically based, but disregard fundamental aspects of the scientific method. Having a BA in Biology with a Chemistry minor, I tend to get especially frustrated with this sort of stuff.
|
What do you yearn for the holidays?
...well Bob, I beg to disagree. This genetic predisposition thingy is crappola.