A proper theory of morality depends upon the separation of intentions from results. - Stephen Jay Gould

I am supposed to be a “nurturist” in the great “nature-nurture” debate, but I find nothing upsetting in this notion of biological influence upon human behavior. I suppose I must also emphasize once again, and for the umpteenth time as we all do, that the categories are absurd and that there is no “nature-nurture” debate as such, the pleasant alliteration of the phrase notwithstanding. Every scientist, indeed every intelligent person, knows that human social behavior is a complex and indivisible mix of biological and social influences. The issue is not whether nature or nurture determines human behavior, for these factors are truly inextricable, but the degree, intensity, and nature of the constraint exerted by biology upon the possible forms of social organization.

Evolving life must experience a vast range of possibilities, based on environmental histories so unpredictable that no realized route - the pathway to consciousness in the form of Homo sapiens or Little Green Men, for example - can be construed as a highway to heaven, but must be viewed as a tortuous track rutted with uncountable obstacles and festooned with innumerable alternative branches. Any reasonably precise repetition of our earthly route on another planet therefore becomes wildly improbable even in a trillion cases.

Great thinkers build their edifices with subtle consistency. We do our intellectual forebears an enormous disservice when we dismember their visions and scan their systems in order to extract a few disembodied “gems”—thoughts or claims still accepted as true. These disarticulated pieces then become the entire legacy of our ancestors, and we lose the beauty and coherence of older systems that might enlighten us by their unfamiliarity—and their consequent challenge—in our fallible (and complacent) modern world.