develop to his or her genetic capacity, there would indeed be major

differences in ability and performance and these would be fair and natural.
But there is no more biology in the metaphor of innate capacity than there is
in the notion of fixed genetic effects. The unique interaction between
organism and environment cannot be described by differences in capacity. It
is true that if two genetically different organisms developed in exactly the
same environment, they would be different, but that difference cannot be
described as different capacities because the genetical type that was superior
in one environment may be inferior in a second developmental environment.
For example, strains of rats can be selected for better or poorer ability to
find their way through a maze, and these strains of rats pass on their
differential ability to run the maze to their offspring so they are certainly
genetically different in this respect. But if exactly the same strains of rats are
given a different task, or if the conditions of learning are changed, the bright
rats turn out to be dull and the dull rats turn out to be bright, There is no
general genetic superiority of one rat strain over another in finding its way
through a problem.
A more subtle and mystifying approach to biological determinism rejects
both the genetic fixity of the first view and the capacity metaphor of the
second and is, instead, statistical. Essentially, it states the problem as one of
partitioning the effects of environment and genes so that we can say that,
perhaps, 80 per-cent of the difference among individuals is caused by their
genes and 20 percent by their environment. Of course, these differences
must be on a population level rather than an individual level. It would make
no sense at all to say that of someone's height of five feet eleven and a half
inches, five feet two were a result of her genes and the other nine and a half
inches were put there by the food she ate. 'The statistical view considers the
proportion of variation among individuals rather than partitioning a
particular individual measurement. The statistical approach tries to assign
some proportion of all of the variation among individuals or groups to
variation among their genes, and a second proportion that results from
variation among their environments.
The implication is that if most of the variation in, say, intelligence among
individuals is a consequence of variation among their genes, then
manipulating the environment will not make much difference. It is often