'A passionate defence of the enduring power of human nature ... both life-affirming and deeply satisfying' Daily Telegraph
Recently many people have assumed that we are blank slates shaped by our environment. But this denies the heart of our being: human nature. Violence is not just a product of society; male and female minds are different; the genes we give our children shape them more than our parenting practices. To acknowledge our innate abilities, Pinker shows, is not to condone inequality, but to understand the very foundations of humanity.
'Brilliant ... enjoyable, informative, clear, humane' New Scientist
'If you think the nature-nurture debate has been resolved, you are wrong ... this book is required reading' Literary Review
'An original and vital contribution to science and also a rattling good read' Matt Ridley, Sunday Telegraph
'Startling ... This is a breath of air for a topic that has been politicized for too long' Economist
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
In The Blank Slate, the bestselling author Steven Pinker produces his most polemical and convincing attack upon the nurture side of the nature versus nurture debate. Pinker's previous books The Language Instinctand How the Mind Works have already attracted huge praise and controversy in arguing that language and cognition are natural rather than cultural. In The Blank Slate he refines and extends his arguments.
The book is aimed at "people who wonder where the taboo against human nature came from", and promises to explain "the moral, emotional and political colorings of the concept of human nature in modern life". For Pinker, the belief that we are all born as "blank slates" upon which culture places its decisive imprint is not only wrong but dangerous. He persuasively argues that "the conviction that humanity could be reshaped by massive social engineering projects led to some of the greatest atrocities in history". This is all very well, but at over 500 pages it can also be daunting for the general reader, as Pinker takes on all-comers, from biologists and sociologists to a dizzying array of classical thinkers from Calvin and Hobbes to Marx and Dawkins. The sections on gender will undoubtedly inflame many feminist writers (the most persuasive of which Pinker sadly neglects to discuss), and the criticisms of modern art are flimsy, but The Blank Slate is an impressive and sustained broadside that cannot be ignored. -–Jerry Brotton
A passionate defence of the enduring power of human nature ... both life-affirming and deeply satisfying (Tim Lott Daily Telegraph, Books of the Year)
Brilliant ... enjoyable, informative, clear, humane (New Scientist)
If you think the nature-nurture debate has been resolved, you are wrong ... this book is required reading (Literary Review)
An original and vital contribution to science and also a rattling good read (Matt Ridley Sunday Telegraph)
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
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