THE THEORY OF PATRIARCHY:A Final Summation, Including Responses to Fifteen Years of Criticism

It is arguable that the central questions requiring explanation by the behavioural and social sciences are those falling under the rubric “nature vs. nurture”. To be sure, the issue is oversimplified when stated so simply; there are both physiological and environmental elements in the causation of behaviour, as well as feedback through which each alters the other. Moreover, discussions of this dichotomy can often be seen to be sterile arguments about definition, rather than answers to the empirical question of what is, in fact, happening. What matters is not “nature” or “nurture” in the abstract, but the roles physiology, environment, and the interaction of the two play in generating specific behaviour.