New Improvements in the Old Tools

Abstract

The inheritance of behavior has been a subject of debate for many generations, but it is only very recently that the debate became grounded in observation and experiment. Prior to the use of the new tools of molecular biology, the debate about nature and nurture created much more heat than light. But the recent advances in molecular genetics, described briefly in the previous chapter, have now made it possible to address objectively questions that interest virtually everyone. In fact, some of the more pressing questions have even been given a satisfactory answer. This is not to say that any single question has been definitively answered; quite likely it will take another generation to really settle some issues. But scientists have made some real progress.