Biological determinism

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A 1920s display comparing brain types to criminality.

Biological determinism is the hypothesis that biological factors such as an organism's individual genes (as opposed to social or environmental factors) completely determine how a system behaves or changes over time.

Consider certain human behaviors, such as having a particular sexual orientation, committing murder, or writing poetry. A biological determinist would look only at innate factors, such as genetic makeup, in deciding whether or not a given person would exhibit these behaviors. They would ignore non-innate factors, such as social customs and expectations, education, and physical environment.

Biologists sometimes regard a charge of biological determinsim as a straw man, as there is currently no support for strict biological determinism in the field of genetics or development, and virtually no support among geneticists for the strong thesis of biological determinism. However, individual scientists may disagree as to the role that genetic and environmental factors play. Modern genetics, in large part, is concerned with studying the dialogue between genes and environment.

Biological determinism is the opposite of social determinism.