Through historical discourses the boundaries between the concepts “nature” and “nurture” have been blurred, thus hampering the understanding of conflicts in contemporary debates on, for example, medicine and gene technology. In education, such conflicts between nature and nurture are brought to the fore, and without promoting the understanding of the multiple meanings of these concepts and their roles in societal discourse the goals to develop students’ socioscientific decision-making seem unattainable. This study problematizes students’ use of “nature” and “naturalness” to further the development of the experience of science education in relation to the nature-nurture debate. We build on the social constructivism view that present conceptions of nature and naturalness emanate from historical and modern social constructions of nature. Data were collected from interviews with 33 upper secondary school students (16-19 years) from 4 classes. Students’ claims or explanations that actualized the control of human actions pertaining to treatments for hereditary diseases by making use of concepts of “nature” and “naturalness were analysed. Within the Enlightenment view and the Romantic view, the students suggested control of human activity on different levels of biological organisation. The Romantic concept of nature was described by referring to the balance in nature (population level), the purity of nature (organism and cellular levels), and the laws of nature (gene level). Students holding the Enlightenment view of nature presented the imperfection of nature (organism, cellular and gene levels) as a common phenomenon. Here, nurture was considered natural to overcome such imperfections. Apparently, the Enlightenment view allows the embedding of nurture into nature by use of knowledge, in contrast to the preserving and moral stance held within the Romantic view. These conflicting views should be addressed in biological education to promote students’ understanding of contemporary discourses dependent on the different concepts of nature and nurture.