ABSTRACT
A cynical attitude toward progress in psychology is that we simply move back and forth between well-defined polarities, on pendulum swings, without really getting anywhere. Personally, I much prefer the model of a helix, in which we can recognize steady progress in one direction while not denying oscillations of perspective on certain other issues. One unmistakable trend that has been sweeping across the behavioral and cognitive sciences is the advancement of genetic explanations over environmental explanations. This is easy to find in such diverse fields as linguistics, intelligence, personality, and mental health, to say nothing of medicine. My grandparents were staunch believers in genetic causation, too, but I like to think we now have better reasons for our attitudes than they did.
