14 - The resolution of the nature–nurture controversy by Russian psychology: Culturally biased or culturally specific?

Summary

The historical context in which the individual objects, large or small,…appear in their true relative meaning is itself a whole, in terms of which every individual thing is to be fully understood in its significance, and which in turn is to be fully understood in terms of these individual things

[Gadamer, Truth and Method, 1984, p. 156].

Any theory, even in the natural sciences, is inevitably influenced by culture. A Russian atomic physicist conducting an experiment with elementary particles (what could be more culturally neutral?) at an American university joked that Russian and American atomic physics are like cousins – they share some genes in common, making them similar, but they were raised in different homes, leading to dissimilarities.

It has often been noted that although science is thought of as the dispassionate pursuit of facts, in reality it is much more than that. As Le Vay, a gay scientist who discovered a link between human brain structure and homosexuality, stated in an interview, “Everyone has some place they are coming from; every scientist is a human being” (Marshall, 1992).

We all view the world from our own perspectives. According to Stephen Jay Gould (Barinaga, 1992), it is a pervasive fact of human existence that we as social beings find it extraordinarily difficult to step outside our own convictions and see them through the eyes of a detached observer.