Schneider, S. M. (2003).
Evolution, behavior principles, and developmental systems: A review
of Gottlieb’s Synthesizing nature-nurture: Prenatal roots of instinctive
behavior..
Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior,
79, 137-152.
Gottlieb's developmental psychobiology book provides a base for
reexamining the place of the experimental analysis of behavior in
the life sciences. His experimental program demonstrating the
critical function of the environment in the development of a
species-typical behavior helped force an acceptance of
probabilistic epigenesis, the acknowledgment that the
developmental genome-environment system is fully interactional.
(Indeed, nature vs. nurture is deader than a doornail.) The
repercussions for evolutionary biology and the roles and
categorizations of genes, behavior, and environment in
behavior-environment relations are explored in light of current
knowledge, including specific implications for the experimental
analysis of behavior.
Key words: nature-nurture issues, developmental psychobiology, probabalistic
epigenesis, evolution, behavior categories, genes, imprinting