Is South Korean figure skater Kim Yeon-ah’s success a natural talent or a result of hard work?

The case of South Korean figure skater Kim Yeon-ah is used to explore the debate about whether a person’s talent is innate or shaped by environment and practice. It presents evidence from both genetic and environmental determinism, arguing that both factors play a role.

 

Kim Yeon-ah has broken the world record in South Korea, a figure barren country, beating the traditional figure powerhouses of the United States and Canada. But was Kim’s ability innate or acquired with practice? The question of whether a person’s talent is innate or acquired by the environment in which he or she lives, and whether a person’s personality, appearance, and IQ are also innate or learned, has been asked since time immemorial. However, the answers to these questions are still unclear, and the two sides of the debate are polarised. However, the debate about what influences human beings should not be seen as an either/or issue of nurture or nature, but rather as a matter of both, with varying degrees of influence.
Genetic determinism, which claims that everything about us is innate, or nature, is as follows. Genes are seen as the basis of an organism, and the sum of these genes constitutes the organism’s behaviour. Human social behaviour is also caused by genes. The Selfish Gene, a popular scientific book, also argues that human behaviour is determined by genes. There are two ancient theories on this subject: the Sexual Good Theory and the Sexual Evil Theory in the East, and the Stoics and the Original Sin Theory in the West. Mencius’ theory of sexual goodness is a view that people are born with good sex and nature. In other words, people are born good, which is the core argument of sexual goodness. The Western school of Stoicism also holds that human nature is good. In contrast, Sun Tzu’s theory of sexual evil holds that people are born evil by nature. The Western theory of original sin also holds that humans are inherently evil and born to sin. Let’s take a look at the evidence behind these claims. First of all, the phenotype of a person’s traits is determined by their genes. In the case of blood type, the type of gene inherited from the parents determines the child’s blood type, and in the case of polydactyly, the growth of six fingers on one hand, the gene that causes polydactyly is present in the person’s chromosomes. In this way, even the fetus in the mother’s womb knows before it is born whether it will have a disorder or disease. Beyond these clearly visible phenotypes, there is also evidence that our intellectual abilities, personality, and tastes are influenced by our genes and determined from birth. According to Richard Hunstein and Charles Murray’s The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class in American Life, a person’s intellectual ability is largely innate and can predict their social status. This is especially true for racial differences, with a significant gap in intellectual ability between white and African-American adults in the U.S. The evidence also points to the similarities in the lives of twins who grew up in different circumstances. Twins who grew up in different environments and had no idea they were twins had the same hobbies and shared similar preferences. Psychometricians’ studies of the human brain show that the psychological and rational parts of the brain are strongly linked to heredity. About 80 per cent of the psychological and rational parts of the brain are genetically determined. These lines of evidence support genetic determinism, which holds that we are determined by the nature we are born with.
The other side of the argument is environmental determinism, which states that we are born with nothing and develop through nurture, and that our structure and behaviour is strongly influenced by our environment. These arguments have been around since ancient times. The theory of sexless goodness and evil, which holds that humans are neither inherently good nor evil, but can be made good or evil by education. In the West, Locke likened the human mind to a blank slate and saw it as neither good nor evil. The arguments in favour of environmental determinism can be seen in everyday life. People are strongly influenced by social preconceptions. In one experiment, female students were divided into two groups and given an essay claiming that girls are worse at maths than boys for genetic reasons, and another essay claiming that there is no difference in maths ability between girls and boys. Afterwards, they were asked to solve a difficult maths problem, and the results showed that the group that read the essay about girls being worse at maths due to genetics performed worse than the group that read the essay about there being no difference in maths ability between the sexes. In the former case, the students believed that they were bad at maths and therefore put less effort into solving the problem. In this way, people are influenced by their surroundings and adapt to them by thinking of them as their talents and self. If you keep a cricket in a glass jar for a long time and adapt it to jump only up to the height of the jar, it will only be able to jump up to the height of the jar even if you leave the lid open. This example is particularly common in criminal behaviour. If a woman is kidnapped as a child and tries to escape several times, but is recaptured each time, she may simply resign herself to the fact that she is no longer able to escape, even when she is old enough to do so. Another reason is as follows. The similarity of twins, which the aforementioned person cited as evidence that many things are determined by nature at birth, can also be interpreted in terms of upbringing, as the twins lived in the same womb for nine months, and the womb is an environmental factor, not a genetic one. There are also numerous examples of children being raised by animals, and they are known to mimic the behaviour and sounds of the animal that raised them. A Russian girl who was raised by dogs was found crawling around naked and gnawing on dogs and bones when she was found. These are just a few of the arguments that bolster environmental determinism: people adapt and develop according to their environment.
However, genetic determinism and environmental determinism are not black and white. Just as a healthy person is not sterile and a sick person is not infected with germs, but the degree of sickness varies depending on the degree of germs, so too, genetic determinism and environmental determinism cannot be said to be either genetic or environmental, but rather coexist in proportion. Genes determine some of our lives, but the environment can determine the rest. It’s easy to fall into scepticism when genetic determinism is the only thing that defines us. If everything is decided by sperm and egg before birth, who will put in the effort and live life to the fullest, then everything in the world is determined. Intelligence is also determined, so the number of test scores will always be the same, and the number of universities you can go to is determined by your test scores. Then your position in society is also determined. No one will work hard if they know they will not be rewarded. In communism, everyone works together and the profits are shared equally, regardless of contribution. So people who experience this don’t work as hard, which leads to a decline in overall productivity, and it becomes a vicious cycle. Just as many countries have recognised the problems with communism and are changing their systems, genetic determinism without rewards for hard work can also be recognised as a problem. Conversely, if environmental determinism alone defines human beings, there are unexplained gaps. The strongest evidence for this is genes. As mentioned above, many of our traits are determined by our genes. The colour of our eyes, the presence or absence of eyelids, and even the shape of our earlobes have been shown to be determined by genes. The Human Genome Project has also revealed all the sequences in our genes – the arrangement of bases, the building blocks that make up our genes, and which determine our biological characteristics – which can be analysed to predict inherited diseases and other abnormalities. These traits are not influenced by the environment, but are inherent in the fertilised egg, and it is difficult to explain the true geniuses as having been created by their surroundings. If excelling in a particular field at a young age, or having an exceptionally high IQ and being able to solve all the difficult maths problems in kindergarten, could only be achieved by the environment, then all parents would want to provide such an environment for their children, and the human race would be levelled upwards, and there would be no geniuses in the world. In this way, genetic determinism and environmental determinism are not an either/or proposition, but rather a combination of the two. According to Richard Lewontin, if two people make a pottery, one kneads the dough and the other shapes the pot, the contribution to the finished product cannot be measured in numbers, and similarly, genetic determinism and environmental determinism cannot be measured in exact numbers, but both contribute a certain amount to human life.
Since ancient times, there has been an ongoing debate about whether humans are born with their futures decided at birth or whether they are shaped by their environment. Both sides of the debate are convincing, and both have strong scientific evidence to back up their claims. However, both arguments have their merits, and the idea that both nature and nurture play a role in traits such as intelligence and personality has been proposed and gained a lot of support. The ancient Greek teacher Isocrates argued for the possibility of education, arguing that those who are naturally gifted can easily learn what they want to learn, while those who are not naturally gifted find it difficult to reach excellence, even with training. However, we don’t know which of these theories are influential in which areas of human traits, or how much each influences all traits. It will take a long time to find out, just as it took a long time to find out about human heredity and genes. Until then, the debate between nature and nurture will likely continue, but it is arguable that both have an impact on us.