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The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature, by Steven Pinker
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From Publishers Weekly
In his last outing, How the Mind Works, the author of the well-received The Language Instinct made a case for evolutionary psychology or the view that human beings have a hard-wired nature that evolved over time. This book returns to that still-controversial territory in order to shore it up in the public sphere. Drawing on decades of research in the "sciences of human nature," Pinker, a chaired professor of psychology at MIT, attacks the notion that an infant's mind is a blank slate, arguing instead that human beings have an inherited universal structure shaped by the demands made upon the species for survival, albeit with plenty of room for cultural and individual variation. For those who have been following the sciences in question including cognitive science, neuroscience, behavioral genetics and evolutionary psychology much of the evidence will be familiar, yet Pinker's clear and witty presentation, complete with comic strips and allusions to writers from Woody Allen to Emily Dickinson, keeps the material fresh. What might amaze is the persistent, often vitriolic resistance to these findings Pinker presents and systematically takes apart, decrying the hold of the "blank slate" and other orthodoxies on intellectual life. He goes on to tour what science currently claims to know about human nature, including its cognitive, intuitive and emotional faculties, and shows what light this research can shed on such thorny topics as gender inequality, child-rearing and modern art. Pinker's synthesizing of many fields is impressive but uneven, especially when he ventures into moral philosophy and religion; examples like "Even Hitler thought he was carrying out the will of God" violate Pinker's own principle that one should not exploit Nazism "for rhetorical clout." For the most part, however, the book is persuasive and illuminating.Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
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From Library Journal
Pinker moves from How the Mind Works to how human nature works, offering a theory that ably blends instinct and choice. Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Product details
Hardcover: 509 pages
Publisher: Viking; 1st edition (September 30, 2002)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0670031518
ISBN-13: 978-0670031511
Product Dimensions:
6.5 x 1.7 x 9.6 inches
Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review:
4.3 out of 5 stars
365 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#45,222 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
I picked up this book since Richard Dawkins talked about his work with Mr Pinker on his chapter of evolution. Like Richard Dawkins, Steven Pinker doesn't shy away from controversy, and just like Dawkins he's extremely well educated in his subjects in the smallest of details.He lights up a giant science blowtorch to both the left and the right's notions regarding human nature.As a parent of two children I was particularly interested in his parenting section, where the argument of "nature VS nurture" is torched. Explanations for how a parent does and doesn't shape their kids are unique, basically he's saying that parents are less significant than the rest of the environment (country, region, city/town) and what the culture that environment provides. While this might appear a "it takes a village" leftist argument, in reality it's just a common sense argument that I see every day as a person who left home to move to a different part of the world and after meeting a girl there; watch as my children grow up here and how different they are from me as a child and are more like other children here. Yet at the same time his use of adoption studies and separated twin studies are at once fascinating and also hard to argue against as he explains how much of us is in the genes and not in that environment.On crime and IQ he dispels moral notions and poses new ones as he explains our newfound ability to determine a person's pre-disposition to violent or peaceful conflict resolution via brain scans, which he admits should have been expected after the extraordinary 19th century case of Phineas Gage surviving a traumatic brain injury and his behavior change predicted it.He also tackles race, gender, and many other hot issues.
This book is about science and politics. Pinker took on the project this book represents after colleagues told him that little boys are aggressive because they’re socialized to be, teenagers get the idea to compete for appearance thanks to spelling bee awards, and men think sex is desirable because society tells them it is. In other words, humans are born a blank slate, only nurture, not nature, will make them what they are. “This is the mentality of a cult,†writes Pinker, “in which fantastical beliefs are flaunted as proof of one’s piety. This mentality cannot exist with an esteem for truth… [and is] responsible for unfortunate trends… [like] a stated contempt among many scholars for the concepts of truth, logic, and evidence, and the inevitable reaction [of] politically incorrect shock jocks who revel in anti-intellectualism and bigotry, emboldened by the knowledge that the intellectual establishment has forfeited claims of credibility…†Amen to that!Pinker shows the cult fearful of findings from cognitive science, neuroscience, behavioral genetics, and evolutionary physiology. Why? Because they make the errant assumption that pre-wired humans are incapable of being made moral and humane. Their interpretation of statistics was as certainty, not probability. Hence, what we’re now so familiar with from the Right were long before practiced by the Left. Scientific findings were not only denied and vilified, but scientists who dare desecrate the creed were attacked with smear campaigns, character assassination, and words put in their mouth only to pronounce how wrong they were. Even the likes of paleontologist Steven J. Gould (stunned me), geneticist Richard Lewontin (naturally), and the neuroscientist Steven Rose (daft) were dupes for the movement. This troika and the campus snowflakes they inspired labeled E.O. Wilson, Richard Dawkins, and Robert Trivers as genocidal bigots, racists, practitioners of eugenics, Nazis (yawn), and Right-wing prophets of patriarchy (more yawn). All because Wilson et. al. found biology responsible for much of human behavior. (Was this really a surprise?) While Pinker’s focus is social “science†doctrine, not the shock jocks he refers to (Rush Limbaugh etc.), as one reads this book it becomes apparent there’s no difference between the two, other than what they proclaim as sacrosanct and blasphemy.After a history of the blank slate starting with John Locke, followed by the Great Schism and what the cult is trying to protect, Pinker dives into measurement, data, and reason. The identical twin studies were so pronounced and ironclad, I had to reread them, then check references to believe these clones (which is what twins are) could be so identical in their behavior. That is, twins separated at birth, shipped off to different countries, class structures, learning environments, never to know the other or their common parents, found decades later to have the same behaviors in a myriad of the most nuanced and peculiar ways. Biology matters.So it is, with the purifying flames of science separated from politically correct programs of pseudo-morality, Pinker burns just about every quasi-religious Postmodernist liberal dogma in the blank slate arena you can name—with the exception of gender-fluidity, not yet concocted. I hope one day he’ll do the same to Creationists and global warming deniers on the Right. What a thrill, and a shame to find even biologists themselves got caught up in the PC creed of our times. It also clarified for me what almost cannot be done in physics and chemistry (except for transparent liars like Ivar Giaever). Biology, several steps up from the closest thing we’ve got to certainty in the foundations of reality, allows for some fiddle-faddle and hoodwink, so long as the promoter has a notable name like Gould. Limbaugh and Creationists love this. Gould, the troika, and their followers deserve their share of credit for the monster they helped create on the Right as a response to this kind of nonsense.
One of the most interesting books I've ever read. Is at a decent reading level (I would guess grade 12+), but an interesting read for anyone. It is a little all over the place in the first few chapters, but picks up after that and is extremely insightful. Has completely changed how I perceive the world. Would highly recommend to anyone that isn't skeptical of behavioral science.
Even though this book was published a few years back, it is very relevant in 2018. It helps to understand why people view things so differently as soon as human nature is brought into debates. Hopefully people will stop treating well-studied and well-founded scientific truths as though they are "taboo" or unspeakable just because they fear the consequences of admitting that we are not all born innocent and equal.
Important scientific corrective to the current politically correct insanity. And, Pinker's writing is clear and approachable, and sometimes even humorous.
Mr. Pinker is an exceptional thinker, able to correlate detailed knowledge to reach broad and well supported conclusions. I admire anyone who's work is assailed by each of the far ends of the political spectrum. He is a fine writer, clear and entertaining. To me, his only shortcomings are an occasional tendency to use too many words and a tendency to be overly (although justifiably) proud of his work.
This took me a while to get into but by the middle part of the book I was quite focused and enjoying it. My most valuable takeaway has been how science research has given support to what is legitimate in philosophies of human nature on the left AND the right. And what's wrong in those philosophies is where we spend most of our time being defensive and non-productive. Good science wins!
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