Word.ws English Dictionary

biological determinism

biological determinism noun: the hypothesis that biological factors such as an organism's genes (as opposed to social or environmental factors) determine the majority of psychological and behavioural traits.

Noun

biological determinism (uncountable)

  1. The hypothesis that biological factors such as an organism's genes (as opposed to social or environmental factors) determine the majority of psychological and behavioural traits.
    • Some of the definitions of feminism floating around the peace movement these days sound like little more than a call to validate Victorian cultural femininity. 'Women are peacemakers, men are warriors. […] Feminism is about love and nurturance. As mothers we know about that.' This is biological...1982 April 15, Donna Warnock, “Feminism and Militarism: Can the Peace Movement Reach Out?”, in Win
  2. The interpretation of humans and human life from a strictly biological point of view.
    • Roe V. Wade: a flawed, but revolutionary pronouncement, the first real break in the prison of biological determinism that has kept women in their place.1983 February 5, Rhonda Copelon, quotee, “Roe v. Wade: The Challenge of the Next Decade”, in Gay Community News, volume 10, number 28, page 5

Questions about biological determinism

What does biological determinism mean?
Biological determinism means the hypothesis that biological factors such as an organism's genes (as opposed to social or environmental factors) determine the majority of psychological and behavioural traits.
What part of speech is biological determinism?
Biological determinism is a noun.

Words near biological determinism in the dictionary

  1. biological big bang
  2. biological clock
  3. biological clocks
  4. biological control
  5. biological controls
  6. biological determinism
  7. biological determinist
  8. biological fuel cell
  9. biological fuel cells
  10. biological immortality
  11. biological imperative

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: biological determinism (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “biological determinism.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/biological_determinism. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.