Galton's Nature Vs. Nurture Theory

The particular child development theorist that interested me for this assignment was Francis Galton. I do not fully agree with his thought process and ideas, but he did provide an interesting viewpoint on the nature vs. nurture theory. He is actually the theorist that coined the term "Nature vs. Nurture". The main detail that persuaded me to chose Francis Galton is that he is Charles Darwin's cousin. I am a co-teacher in a Biology class and Charles Darwin is a huge person of interest in many of our units covered in class throughout the year. The main concept of Darwin's that we focus on in class is the Natural Selection theory which, simply put, states that the traits most favorable to surviving in an environment are the ones that get past
Nurture has always been of huge interest to me. There are two schools of thought in the theory. The nature side of the theory believes that everyone's traits and personality are determined by our genetic makeup and genotype that we are born with. Offspring are simply a product of the genes that were provided to them from their parents. Over time, the traits inherited are influenced by the environment an organism is placed in. The environment and resources available are the driving forces of evolution. An important aspect to this process is that traits are never fully gotten rid of. When referring to an organism's genotype, there are two main types such as homozygous and heterozygous. An organism with a homozygous genotype has only one trait of that particular phenotype that it can pass along to its offspring. A heterozygous organism has both the dominant and recessive traits of a phenotype. These organisms can also be referred to as "carriers". This means that they express the dominant trait but still carry the recessive trait. An example of this would be two black fur rabbits producing an offspring with white
He was heavily influenced by his cousin and researched further into inheritance and the evolution of traits. His most notable work, Natural Inheritance, detailed the influence prior generations have on their offspring. His research showed that the further away an individual was from an offspring, hereditarily speaking, the less the individual contributed to the phenotype and genotype of the offspring. Through his research, Galton was able to conclude, much like Darwin, that evolution filtered out the most beneficial physical and mental traits. The most notable attribute that Galton focused on was intelligence. He observed that academic achievement tended to be most prevalent in families that had always succeeded academically. With this in mind, Galton took his findings and theory to another extreme in regards to the human population. He believed that intelligent individuals should try to reproduce with other intelligent individuals as much as possible and, on the other side of this, the less intelligent individuals should avoid reproducing altogether. Galton is a huge contributor to the development of eugenics or race improvement. This is the same thought process that Hitler and the Nazi's were trying to implement during World War