The concept of plasticity in the history of the nature-nurture debate in the early twentieth century

Abstract

In this chapter, I analyze how the effort to bring together “nature” and “nurture” has put forward “plasticity” as a key concept in biology. While the notion of plasticity appeared in the field of genetics in the early twentieth century as a solution to the debate between “nature” and “nurture”-the notion of plasticity proved a key concept in articulating those genes and environment; in social science, the opposition seems to persist (probably because the meaning of plasticity itself has not remained stable or uncontroversial among the different fields of biology). In order to understand the issues raised by the nature-nurture debate, it therefore appears necessary to provide a comprehensive view of the history of plasticity within the debate.