Department of Philosophy, University of Guelph, 348 MacKinnon Building, Guelph, Ontario, Canada N1G 2W1.
Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2011 Feb 12;366(1563):444-53. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2010.0224.
Integrating the study of human diversity into the human evolutionary sciences requires substantial revision of traditional conceptions of a shared human nature. This process may be made more difficult by entrenched, 'folkbiological' modes of thought. Earlier work by the authors suggests that biologically naive subjects hold an implicit theory according to which some traits are expressions of an animal's inner nature while others are imposed by its environment. In this paper, we report further studies that extend and refine our account of this aspect of folkbiology. We examine biologically naive subjects' judgments about whether traits of an animal are 'innate', 'in its DNA' or 'part of its nature'. Subjects do not understand these three descriptions to be equivalent. Both innate and in its DNA have the connotation that the trait is species-typical. This poses an obstacle to the assimilation of the biology of polymorphic and plastic traits by biologically naive audiences. Researchers themselves may not be immune to the continuing pull of folkbiological modes of thought.
将人类多样性的研究纳入人类进化科学需要对传统的共同人性观念进行实质性的修正。这一过程可能会因根深蒂固的、“民间生物学”思维模式而变得更加困难。作者之前的工作表明，生物学上幼稚的受试者持有一种隐含的理论，根据这种理论，某些特征是动物内在本质的表现，而另一些特征则是由其环境强加的。在本文中，我们报告了进一步的研究，扩展和完善了我们对民间生物学这一方面的描述。我们考察了生物学上幼稚的受试者对动物特征是否是“先天的”、“在其 DNA 中”或“是其本性的一部分”的判断。受试者并不认为这三个描述是等价的。先天的和在其 DNA 中都意味着该特征是物种典型的。这给生物学上幼稚的受众同化多态性和可塑性特征的生物学带来了障碍。研究人员自己可能也无法免受民间生物学思维模式的持续影响。
