Nature vs. Nurture is the ongoing debate about whether the characteristics of our personality come from our life experiences (a.k.a nurture) or our DNA (a.k.a nature). Scientists have known that our physical characteristics are inherited from our parents from as far back as the 1200's in France. But some go as far as to say that other traits such as intelligence, athletic ability, and other personality traits are also encoded in our individual DNA. The popular term Nature vs. Nurture was invented by a very intelligent English man named Francis Galton in Victorian times. He was deeply influenced by the book The Origin of Species written by his half-cousin the famous Charles Darwin. Like Darwin, he was a highly influential mathematician and scientist. The most common topics debated are what influences traits like intelligence, behavior, ability to socialize, athletic or artistic ability, and other more controversial topics such as homosexuality and obesity. The general consensus of the debate seems to be that all of our physical characteristics come from nature, or the coding of our DNA. However most people seem to think that although some aspects of our personality may come from genetics the general belief is that we develop our personality from the environment we grow up in. I agree that most of our personality comes from environment but I think that things like intelligence and other abilities, such as art and athletics, can be genetic as well.
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