charles darwin believed that human ability is due to a combination of both nature and nurture.
who believed that human ability is due to a combination of both nature and nurture?
charles darwin
the method used in "hereditary genius" has been described as the first example of historiometry. to bolster these results, and to attempt to make a distinction between 'nature' and 'nurture' (he was the first to apply this phrase to the topic), he devised a questionnaire that he sent out to 190 fellows of the royal society. he tabulated characteristics of their families, such as birth order and the occupation and race of their parents. he attempted to discover whether their interest in science was 'innate' or due to the encouragements of others. the studies were published as a book, "english men of science: their nature and nurture", in 1874. in the end, it promoted the nature versus nurture question, though it did not settle it, and provided some fascinating data on the sociology of scientists of the time.
francis galton
the experiment called project nim was one of the first experiments that aimed to show nonhuman primates could be taught a human form of language. the experiment conducted on the chimpanzee dubbed "nim chimpsky" took place in the 1970's and was the idea of herbet s. terrace, to try to disprove the notion put forth by noam chomsky, for whom the chimp was named, stating that language is an exclusively human ability. nim was taught 125 signs in his life, and constantly impressed those he met with his ability to seemingly understand human nature and his mischievous behaviours. similar experiments took place on two other primates, koko and kanzi. koko was able to learn many signs, as well as some novel vocalizations to indicate emotional state. kanzi learned to model human language in an entirely different way. he was able to learn 348 geometrical symbols that represented different words, and to combine symbols in a type of proto-grammar to convey meaning and understanding. his keepers also claim that he understands the meaning of up to 3000 human words. these examples of stunning cognition demonstrate the near-human ability of some trained primates to learn and retain the ability to communicate with humans.
primate cognition