Word: behavior
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Among other things, discipline at the academy is strict. Behavior "condemned by the word of God," such as profanity, smoking, lying, fighting, gambling and cheating, is considered grounds for corporal punishment and even expulsion. Be fore their children are accepted for enrollment, parents must sign a letter authorizing staff members to paddle students for continual offenses. (The letter explains: "Following the administering of the strokes, the staff will pray with your child, assuring him or her of their love.") Says Howard Riles, father of a sixth-grader: "What I hope is that when my daughter goes off to college...
Konner calls his book "a treatise on the biology of the emotions," but the book is really concerned with the biological basis of behavior The Tangled Wing aims for that same elusive understanding as E O Wilson's On Human Nature, Carl Sagan's The Dragons of Eden, and Robert Andrey's The Territorial Imperative, and it touches on the subjects of many other less sweeping books which have tried to solve the age-old debate between "nature" and "nurture...
...graceful, flowing prose, Konner sides with neither. Instead, he shows clear impatience with those who are content to deal with human behavior as a determinate product of the two distinct forces, heredity or environment, or some set mix of the two. He sees the so called "nature nurture" mix as an infinitely complex relationship. "Now that the discussion of heredity versus environment has transcended the 'versus,' passing beyond the question. Which and the only slightly less useful question. How much to the mature question. How we must prepare ourselves to face the fact that this last is not one question...
...book proceeds through examinations of the evolutionary history of Homo sapiens, general patterns of human behavior, the biological basis of gender differences (a delicate subject), and the evolutionary role of language Konner then looks at the implications of behavioral biology's latest contribution to the understanding of seven human emotions rage, fear, joy, lust, love, grief, and gluttony...
...meticulously spelled out in its genes, but experiments have shown that the environment the rat is raised in has a profound effect on the ultimate state of its brain "Look," Konner says frankly. "Experience changes the brain." Indeed, in many cases, "the nongenetic sources of variation in behavior may be so large as to swamp any effects of the genes...