Is it possible to raise a person from a baby with given physical or spiritual properties, or is it predetermined already at his birth - this question has been intriguing the best minds of mankind for more than one thousand years. However, an unequivocal answer to it has not yet been identified, and is unlikely to be found in the future.
From the perspective of an ancient Athenian
Aristotle, Plato, and Diogenes pondered the question of the origin of talent, but none of these famous philosophers found a clear answer. It was empirically established that, for example, the talent of a warrior in a person can be developed. In ancient Sparta, to obtain perfect warriors, boys were brought up almost from infancy in extremely harsh conditions (suffice it to say that they had to sleep naked on a straw bed all year round, and for warming they used nettle, which burns the body). However, no tricks could be used to guarantee the raising of the same Platons or Sophocles from babies. The talent could grow, but more often for some reason it did not grow. Even the great Aristotle had a great student - Alexander the Great, but most of the rest have vanished into oblivion. And, in the end, everything that relates not to the bodily, but to the spiritual sphere was left to the mercy of the gods, good, there were plenty of them.
From the point of view of a modern person
Since then, 2, 5 millennia, mankind, in general, adhered to a similar point of view, and only at the end of the 19th century, thanks to the advent of genetics, did the first progress appear on this issue. The deeper the geneticists dug, the further the gods moved away, giving way to his Majesty the genome, or the totality of hereditary material contained in the cell of the organism. And now, many scientists, in the question of what is more important in the formation of a personality - education or heredity - unambiguously began to put the second in the first place; extinction was predicted to pedagogy.
Further research, however, shattered this point of view as well. Here is the time to remember the very similar, but by no means the same root to the gene, the word "genius". It is generally accepted to regard genius as the highest degree of talent (although it is impossible to draw a clear line between the two concepts). It turned out that the postulate of the priority of heredity over upbringing is indisputable only in relation to geniuses. Genius is a consequence of the inheritance of a special combination of parental genes, as a rule, with certain pathologies - not without reason that most geniuses have obvious physical or mental abnormalities. And the further along the scale from genius to “simple” talent, the less pathologies, and therefore the less the influence of heredity. Of course, the teachers were most happy about these conclusions, because raising children is their hobby and bread.
Modern man's look into the future
It turns out that if no revolutionary breakthroughs are made in genetics or pedagogy, the question of the origin and development of talent will remain open. We'll have to come to terms with dualism, as physicists had to come to terms with the dualism of the nature of light. Even if it is ever theoretically proven that it is possible, by manipulating pathological genes, to put the production of geniuses or at least talents on stream, it is unlikely that it will come to practice - "making" individuals like Steve Hawking, with all due respect to this great astrophysicist, a civilized society (and then it will undoubtedly be so, if at all) will not allow.
