[second_sight_kyle]

The fact that human variation within a culture is larger than the variation between cultures should attest to this.

I would be careful of "facts" like that. It depends what exactly you're measuring the variation of.

If you think humans are rational beings, that's up to you. But 20 minutes on the subway and a copy of the morning newspaper should be enough to put that idea into question.

And the idea that we are prisoners of our biology has jack-shit to do with the genome. There's an entire branch of biology dedicated to studying the evolution of behaviour, which is entirely independent of our latter-day fascination with genetic determinism.

Male convict cichlids flare their gill covers in dominance displays because that's what male convict cichlids do -- we don't need to map their genome to comprehend that this behaviour is inherited.

Well I never said anything about humans and rationality. I'd kind of like to hear more. I think irrationality in any case would mirror variation, which would mirror complexity, which would put the 'prisoners of our biology' idea to rest.

Evolutionary biology has much to do with the genome. I think research into epigenetic modes of inheritance has even been on the heels of evolutionary biology. But you are going to have to explain better how all this is independent of any reference to or study of the genome? It is perfectly logical to study the evolution of "behaviour" in the context of the genome...in fact I think it would be silly not to.

So about this fish...you can make an inference that it is inherited (if the fish learns how to do it in the absence of other fish), but you wouldn't know the mode of inheritance. Which means you are right, we could comprehend that it is inherited. It could be in the genome, or it could be outside the genome in the cell.

There are a few things to consider though. First is that behaviours such as these can very conceivably be learned. You may still think that this makes the fish a prisoner of their biology, but I don't. Second is that humans aren't fish. So male cichlids display an inherited behaviour, and we can make an assumption that they are 'prisoners' of their biology. That's great, but in the human brain and in human development there's a lot more going on. And the more complex a behavior becomes, the less likely it will be due to these 'hard-wired' factors.