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| Original Title: | The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature |
| ISBN: | 0142003344 (ISBN13: 9780142003343) |
| Edition Language: | English |
| Literary Awards: | Pulitzer Prize Nominee for General Nonfiction (2003), William James Book Award (2003) |
Steven Pinker
Paperback | Pages: 528 pages Rating: 4.08 | 20356 Users | 857 Reviews
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| Title | : | The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature |
| Author | : | Steven Pinker |
| Book Format | : | Paperback |
| Book Edition | : | Anniversary Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 528 pages |
| Published | : | August 26th 2003 by Penguin Books (first published 2002) |
| Categories | : | Psychology. Science. Nonfiction. Philosophy. Sociology. Biology. Evolution |
Description In Pursuance Of Books The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature
“In a work of outstanding clarity and sheer brilliance Steven Pinker banishes forever fears that a biological understanding of human nature threatens humane values.”—Helena Cronin, author of The Ant and The Peacock
“A mind blowing, mind openingexpos. Pinker's profoundly positive arguments for the compatibility of biology and humanism are unrivalled for their scope and depth and should be mandatory, if disquieting, reading.”
—Patricia Goldman-Rakic, past president of the Society for Neuroscience
In The Blank Slate, Steven Pinker explores the idea of human nature and its moral, emotional, and political colorings. He shows how many intellectuals have denied the existence of human nature by embracing three linked dogmas: the Blank Slate (the mind has no innate traits), the Noble Savage (people are born good and corrupted by society), and the Ghost in the Machine (each of us has a soul that makes choices free from biology). Each dogma carries a moral burden, so their defenders have engaged in desperate tactics to discredit the scientists who are now challenging them.
Pinker injects calm and rationality into these debates by showing that equality, progress, responsibility, and purpose have nothing to fear from discoveries about a rich human nature. He disarms even the most menacing threats with clear thinking, common sense, and pertinent facts from science and history.
Despite its popularity among intellectuals during much of the twentieth century, he argues, the doctrine of the Blank Slate may have done more harm than good. It denies our common humanity and our individual preferences, replaces hardheaded analyses of social problems with feel-good slogans, and distorts our understanding of government, violence, parenting, and the arts.
Pinker shows that an acknowledgement of human nature that is grounded in science and common sense, far from being dangerous, can complement insights about the human condition made by millennia of artists and philosophers. All this is done in the style that earned his previous books many prizes and worldwide acclaim: wit, lucidity, and insight into matters great and small.
Rating Epithetical Books The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature
Ratings: 4.08 From 20356 Users | 857 ReviewsEvaluation Epithetical Books The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature
Reading this book feels like hearing an intelligent person trying to talk sense to an obstinate child. Every once in a while you pick up an interesting fact, but the ratio of information to text is not high enough to make this book worth ones time. The info is drowned in a sea of qualifiers and platitudes, time after time he states that eugenics and Social Darwinism is bad, much of the book feels designed for soothing the idiotic frenzy of leftist apparatchiks, and to avoid being called a NaziThe Blank Slate was an informative, thought-provoking and polemic book designed to refute ordinary conceptions and intellectual arguments which cut against a sociobiological understanding of humans and human society. I detected a couple instances in which the author, Stephen Pinker, overstated scientific conclusions, leading me to doubt the accuracy of his other scientific evidence. I also have reservations about the rational-actor lens through which he interprets human nature. On the other
Pinker takes on a perspective regarding human nature that tended to dominate the social sciences in the 20th century (with many adherents of the position still active now), namely that humans are "blank slates" and their life course is highly malleable. He says (Pages 2-3): "That theory of human nature--namely that it barely exists--is the topic of this book. . .Challenges to the doctrine from skeptics and scientists have pushed some believers into a crisis of faith and have led others to mount
I can't finish this. The first third or so of the book is interesting and important, mostly because of the discussion about cognitive neuroscience. I think it's extremely important that any educated person in the modern or future world get a solid basic understanding of what we know (and don't know) about how the human brain works. Obviously that will govern our whole understanding of psychology, sociology, and human life in general. Anyone who wants his or her worldview to actually reflect
Louis Menand has written a typically excellent piece on Pinker's arrogance: http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2002...I found this book simultaneously interesting and exasperating, because the author is obviously a highly educated, well-read man who thinks he knows everything about every subject. There is a whole class of these public intellectuals (the late Carl Sagan, Richard Dawins, et al) who play this game: they use the public authority they have gained by virtue of (at least modest) academic
So here's a case where you have a book about how much of our personalities and, well, nature is innate, rather than nurtured into us by our parents or our environment. If The Blank Slate were two hundred pages and focused just on brain science, it'd be one thing. The trouble is that it ends up reading as if Pinker gathered every single study that seemed to support his position and threw it into a blender, and then threw in a number of screeds against groups he has a bone to pick with. The result
'Man will become better when you show him what he is like.' - Anthon ChekovWon't he??? ...Maybe, the arguments in this book can't be put any more eloquently than the quote of Anton Chekov....The book was both fun and terrible to encounter how supposed "liberals" experience the cognitive dissonance by having their assumptions and dogmas challenged.The author goes over controversies , a number of hot buttons, hot zones, Chernobyls, third rails, and so on -- including the arts ( I disagree with him
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