EVOLUTION, BEHAVIOR PRINCIPLES, AND DEVELOPMENTAL SYSTEMS: A REVIEW OF GOTTLIEB'S SYNTHESIZING NATURE‐NURTURE: PRENATAL ROOTS OF INSTINCTIVE BEHAVIOR

Abstract

Gottlieb's developmental psychobiology book provides a base for reexamining the place of the experimental analysis of behavior in the life sciences. His experimental program demonstrating the critical function of the environment in the development of a species‐typical behavior helped force an acceptance of probabilistic epigenesis, the acknowledgment that the developmental genome‐environment system is fully interactional. (Indeed, nature vs. nurture is deader than a doornail.) The repercussions for evolutionary biology and the roles and categorizations of genes, behavior, and environment in behavior‐environment relations are explored in light of current knowledge, including specific implications for the experimental analysis of behavior.