Biological determinism

Biological determinism is the tendency to view human social phenomena (at the individual, group, and societal level) as the products of biological causes. It can be traced back to the earliest philosophical ideas regarding the biological basis of human nature, and it has played an important role in the interpretation of scientific advances in human anatomy, physiology, and genetics. By privileging biological over environmental causes, biological determinism plays a key role in the “nature versus nurture” debate—suggesting that social phenomena are essential, natural, and immutable and therefore only subject to limited modification by the contexts from which these have emerged and in which these are expressed. These features have placed biological determinism at the center of scientific and popular claims regarding the biological nature of social divisions, including gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and disability (among others). The limits these claims place on individual (and group) agency have been criticized on both scientific and philosophical grounds—first, because many such claims mistake phenotypic and genotypic traits as predominantly prescriptive and insensitive to environmental modification; and second, because they involve logical fallacies and cognitive errors that are prone to social and political bias, and serve to “naturalize” pernicious social effects.