Heritage and environment

Many of your characteristics are controlled by your genes, that you inherited from your parents. Genes also play a part in what diseases you catch, or allergies you experience throughout your life. And genes affect how sensitive you are to poison, stress, or infections. But, is it only the genes that are in charge? And does it mean that everything is decided beforehand?

No, it's not only the genes that decide how we turn out. Someone with two tall parents probably also carries 'tallness' genes. But growing requires energy and nutrition, that come from food. If you don't get enough food while growing up, you don't become as tall as you could have been. So there is something else besides the genes having an effect.

Namely, the environment. Environment, in this case, means "what happens to us in life", and how we live our lives: what we eat, if we work out, what illnesses, accidents and other events we encounter. How you turn out is a result of both heritage and, environment. Genes say how likely it is for various characteristics to appear, in other words: the proneness for these characteristics. Whether they actually show up, also depends on the environment.

This Alsatian dog can't learn to count. And it can't learn the four operations. There are no genes in its cells that carry a talent for mathematics. Whereas humans can learn to calculate. So we, unlike the dog, carry genes that enable us to learn mathematics, and to perform complex calculations.

And different people have a different level of talent for maths. Some learn easily. Others take a longer time. Genes do matter. But what really has an effect, is practice.

To become good at maths, you have to practice. This goes for everyone, regardless of the genes. And if you don't practice maths, you will never become good at it, no matter what genes you were born with. This is another example of environment. "How much you practice" is environment. There are two important conclusions here.

Environment is sometimes a lot more important for how you turn out, than the genes. How good you become in maths, is decided a lot more by the number of practice hours, than by the genes you carry from birth. And environment can actually be something you create for yourself, through decisions you make. You decide yourself how much to practice in your maths book. So, how you turn out and develop is the result of an interplay between heritage, and environment.

It's not possible to say what is most important, genes or environment. For some properties, genes have the larger importance, and for other properties environment matters the most. Sometimes the environment is affected by factors difficult to control, like particles in the air, or accidents. But some environmental factors we can affect ourselves, like how much we work out, what we eat, or what we practice.