Time to Retire The Simplicity of Nature vs. Nurture

Are we moral by nature or as a result of learning and culture? Are men and women "hard-wired" to think differently? Do our genes or our schools make us intelligent? These all seem like important questions, but maybe they have no good scientific answer.
Once, after all, it seemed equally important to ask whether light was a wave or a particle, or just what arcane force made living things different from rocks. Science didn't answer these questions—it told us they were the wrong questions to ask. Light can be described either way; there is no single cause of life.
Every year on the Edge website the intellectual impresario and literary agent John Brockman asks a large group of thinkers to answer a single question. (Full disclosure: Brockman Inc. is my agency.) This year, the question is about which scientific ideas should be retired. More...