Best of Today: "Hereditary Propensity"

As we continued on with the reading of Consilience in class today, we came across this idea of hereditary propensity. This idea formed by Wilson is among the many that make up the "narrative of coevolution of genes and culture". This claim that all individuals are predipositioned to learning certain things and being good at certain aspects of life is really interesting. It's basically like saying that since one person's parents were extremely skilled in math and statistics that that person inherited that skill to learn and understand it better and faster than the people around him/her. It's like inheriting your parents mental capability traits just as someone inherits their physical appearances from their parents.
Anyways, this claim of hereditary propensity that Wilson argues really stuck out to me and when we related it to the whole "blank slate" idea that we learned about last year, it made it even more interesting. John Locke and the Trancendentalists were one of the first and most famous to imbed this idea of blank slate into our heads. They were the ones who said that all human beings started off with a blank slate; meaning no predisposition or bias toward anything or anyone. They claimed that as the individual got older and started learning and adapting to life, they themselves chose what they wanted to be good at and what to believe.
Although I find the idea of being born without any predispositions really interesting, I think that what Wilson is saying make more sense. The reason for this is because of personal experience. For example, both of my parents were very good at science. To them, understanding science and applying it to day to day situations just came natural and that's where I got my talent for science. I remember when I was younger, I would be absolutley fascinated with science and I never had to try hard to actually understand the material. Because of my personal experience, I would have to agree with Wilson when he says that individuals inherit traits from their parents and that as they grow older, these traits develop more and more. To me, it just simply does not make any sense to say that we aren't predispositioned to any thoughts or any abilities.