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THE NATURE OF NURTURE. By T.D. Wachs. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. 1992.
Pp. x+191. Cased, L26.00; paper, L12.50.
This book attempts two tasks. Wachs's lesser purpose is to review the recent history of the nature-nurture debate and to evaluate its progress. His major purpose is to expand on what is meant by nurture through the further development of a general theory of the environment. His two aims are linked, because his historical review highlights the inadequacy of previous treatments of environments.
Following Bronfenbrenner & Crouter (1983), Wachs divides the 20th century's approaches to nature-nurture issues in psychology into three distinguishable phases. During Phase 1 (up to about 1930), the key question was: 'Does the environment have any influence on human development?' The clear answer, 'yes', led to Phase 2 (up to the mid-1950s), during which the key question was: 'What specific aspects of the environment are relevant to development?' This second question supplied messier answers, which eventually led to the current Phase 3. Today, Wachs argues, we realize that the environment is far more complicated than hitherto thought. Therefore, we focus primarily on 'process aspects' of environments and on process questions. Wachs then uses Phase 3 as a take-off point for his attempt to provide a better theory of environment.
It is here that troubles start. Wachs is clearly right to emphasize the intractability of developmental environments, while Plomin, in a cogent two-page preface, is right to point out the main reason for it. Discrete physical units (i.e. genes) exist in terms of which we can...