Surely, as we recognize the sesquicentennary year of Darwin’s conception of biological evolution, we must acknowledge that it competes in most minds with all other creation myths (Durant, 1980). This common occurrence was elegantly noted by Darwin in the conclusion of The Origin of Species (1859) when he acknowledged “… I by no means expect to convince experienced naturalists whose minds are stocked with a multitude of facts all viewed, during a long course of years, from a point of view directly opposite to mine”. Thus, the more frequent response to the introduction of a new paradigm is disbelief, perceived threat, antagonism, and outright attack. Those responses are no less dramatic in empirical practice than in the practice of literature, economics, politics, and the wide array of other disciplines. Sadly, any challenge to the commonly held cur- rent order promises to introduce significant dissonance to most practitioners in a discipline. Paradigm shifts are refreshing new ways for humanity to understand the nature of their existence and their universe. It is the epigenetic rules, the hereditary regularities of mental development that bias cultural evolution in one direction as opposed to another, and thus connect the genes to culture.
Rather, human nature is something else for which we have only begun to find ready expression.
What is human nature? It is not the genes, which prescribe it, or culture, its ultimate product.
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