ABSTRACT
Few scientists today seriously doubt that we need to credit evolution rather than some higher power to account for ourselves as intelligent and reasonably versatile beings. What is more controversial, however, is how far we are ruled in decisive ways by what we have inherited biologically from our ancestors. Or instead by what we ourselves learn through our own personal experiences—often so well that, eventually, we don’t even have to think about what to do and how to do such things. For example, how to walk, how to smile, and how to wink at someone else in suggestively meaningful ways. Ominously, many people do not see their habits as habitual at all, that is, as stuff they have learned through experience how to do. Instead, they mistake their habits as instincts—that is, as stuff people do not have to learn because such responses are already written into their genes, either by the Creator or by Darwinian evolution.
