Putting the Social into Science

Look at the words on this page. No one needed to teach you how to see; evolution has hardwired us for this complex task. Now try to understand them. No child is born able to read; this task is learned from parents and teachers in a social setting. In other words, one of our most essential abilities as humans--reading--is the product of a combination of innate and learned traits.

The distinction between nature and nurture was always a false dichotomy even before it became a clich, yet we still tend to think of biology and culture as warring explanations for human...