What makes humans more, "blank slate" than other mammals and animals in general?

Question

Admittedly this kind of veers a little bit into neurology and biology and might be based on a misconception on my part. My question is basically why humans are treated by academia, specifically areas of study like sociology, anthropology, etc. as being less essentialist, or barely essentialist at all compared to how we understand the behaviors and interactions of non-humans. I'd like to clarify what I mean here. I mean biologically essentialist as in treating humans as having a specific nature that's influenced by innate biological factors like sex, genetics, and instinct as opposed to learned sociological factors like following social norms, influence from media, and institutional boundaries. It seems to me like biologically essentialist approaches to humanity are treated as if they don't work at all. I understand the historical context behind biologically essentialist approaches, they were used to justify horrific atrocities and reinforce unfair hierarchies. But it doesn't seem like anyone's even willing to make an honest attempt to analyze humans from the perspective of being really-smart primates as opposed to treating humans as if they're in some vague category above any animal that we know to exist, like just because we graduated beyond the sticks and rocks of other primates. Other animals, including other mammals that have complex behaviors, scientists don't seem to have much trouble saying things like, "males act like this because that's their biological nature as males" and so on and so forth, having no trouble saying that the mind is as biological as any other part of the body. Yet no one seems comfortable saying, "Male humans' brains are (such and such)" or, "People with these genes are (blah blah blah)" even though we acknowledge biology influences everything from your digestive system to your chance of osteoporosis. The community seems to have the belief that humans are nurtured, not natured. Humans are the result of institutions, norms, and constructs and not as much biology. A Saint Bernard dog and a chihuahua have different temperaments, intelligence, and other behaviors because that's their biology but divisions within the human species go only as deep as the body, never touching the mind, and are themselves social constructs. What makes humans so different, aside from the fact that we can generate things in the symbolic realm and pass them around? Why isn't there a strictly biocentric approach to human anthropology? Is it just a matter of we can't safely make judgements in that area until we're truly mindful of all our prejudices and the flaws in our scientific methods? I have a strong feeling this is just the result of ignorance/misinformation on my part. I wasn't able to find any question already asked like this.

Answer 1

A “strictly bio-centric approach” to understanding human nature doesn’t exist, but there does exist a cross-cutting paradigm that relies on biology, anthropology, and psychology to address the issues you’ve mentioned: Evolutionary Psychology (EP).

it’s important to note that EP is not a kind of psychology, but a focus on the mental structures and processes found in humans. A lot of early EP addressed sexual behavior, but it is certainly not just the science of sex.

Research is this paradigm relies on different approaches to disentangle the effects of culture/socialization from things like “instincts.” (You did refer to nature and nurture, and one EP practitioner likened the nature nurture difference to the difference between heat and ingredients in a loaf of baked bread: it’s not an either/or relationship.). At any rate, disentangling culture can be done by (1) studying infants, (2) studying non-human primates, and (3) studying humans with different cultures.

i would recommend an early EP tome, written to persuade, called *The Adapted Mind.*. If you can’t read the whole thing, do read the 100+ pages of the first chapter.