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The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature (平装)
by Steven Pinker
| Category:
Nonfiction, Social-economic |
| Market price: ¥ 168.00
MSL price:
¥ 158.00
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Pre-order item, lead time 3-7 weeks upon payment [ COD term does not apply to pre-order items ] |
MSL rating:
 Good for Gifts |
| MSL Pointer Review:
Undeniably intelligent and thought-provoking, this book is an insightful exploration of modern biological and philosophical issues on what it means to be human. |
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AllReviews |
1 2   | Total 2 pages 18 items |
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The Economist (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-29 00:00>
Ought to be read by anybody who feels they have had enough of nature-nurture rows or who thinks they already know where they stand on the science wars… It could change their minds. |
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San Diego Union Tribune (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-29 00:00>
This is an important book… [Pinker's] position should be the starting point of any debate about whether to continue spending money on programs that fail to take human nature into account. |
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Francis Fukuyama (in the Wall Street Journal) (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-29 00:00>
Pinker points us in the direction of a more productive debate, a debate in which the political implications of science are confronted forthrightly and not simply wished away by politicized scientists. |
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Matt Ridley (author of Genome) (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-29 00:00>
The best book on human nature that I or anyone else will ever read. Truly a magnificent job. |
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M. James Wilkinson (former deputy U.S. representative, United Nations Security Council) (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-29 00:00>
The ideas in this book introduce exciting new considerations for conflict resolution and peacemaking that go deeper than conventional analyses. |
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The Washington Post (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-29 00:00>
Steven Pinker has written an extremely good book-clear, well argued, fair, learned, tough, witty, humane, stimulating. |
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James Mccall (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-29 00:00>
This is Steven Pinker's logical follow-up to The Way the Mind Works. In this, though, he is moving more confidently into the political arena. His goal is nothing less than the total demolishing of three ideas that he names "The Blank Slate", "The Noble Savage", and "The Ghost in the Machine".
The Blank Slate asserts that we are, mentally, essentially the product of our environment, rather than having any prebuilt dispositions or (in the purest version) even talents. The Noble Savage is the idea that man is a naturally peaceable creature that would live harmoniously in cooperative groups were it not that pernicious social forces turn him violent and selfish. Finally, The Ghost in the Machine is our soul, our free will, our ineffable "humanity", that is not caught in the net of DNA and protein, neurons and synapses, that make up our brain: whatever that brain is doing, it's not doing it all; some part of us is divine or at least "spiritual".
OK, I can hear you thinking, that's great: all these ideas have been controversialized to death. Everyone has taken his or her position, and all the arguments that do not reduce to wishful thinking or religious conviction have been made, remade, and believed or not. The topic is dead, or at least in cryogenic storage awaiting some further dramatic developments.
Wrong. I admit I was skeptical for the first several pages that Pinker would have anything new or interesting to say (and such a fat book, too!), but knew him to be smart, learned, and witty. And since he is in my philosophical camp I was not averse to a bit of preaching to the choir. His position is, basically, that the Blank Slate is wrong, the Noble Savage is wrong, and the Ghost in the Machine is wrong. No surprise there: he is a modern scientist who specializes in cognition and embraces the viewpoint and results of evolutionary psychology.
Where he differs from most writers, other than in sheer brilliance, wit, and mastery, is in fair-mindedness. He is concerned to take the best arguments of positions that oppose his own and argue against them. There is always a danger, in a debate stage-managed by the author (in Galbraith's phrase) that the opposing view will get short shrift, or get distorted. Pinker is responding, I think, to years of this sort of thing by writers on both sides of these issues. He really wants to put to rest The Blank Slate, The Noble Savage, and the Ghost in the Machine, and knows he can do it only by being fair - and being seen to be fair - in making his (devastating) rebuttals.
The foregoing does not begin to convey, though, the richness and interest of this book. It is a tour of much of what we know for sure or are starting to learn about the mind, development, and social life. It is rigorous but not pompous, and is packed with interesting anecdote and observations. In fact, one reading does not begin to do it justice. (Which is why I have just read it again.)
Naturally, these three ideas will not really be demolished by this book - they have too large a constituency. And it is the case that many of Pinker's intellectual opponents will simply ignore him - for now. I feel that this book is so good that it will finally become impossible to ignore. I hope that in time it puts to rest - at least among serious and thoughtful people - some harmful and divisive ideas that really are not a matter of opinion. |
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Trevor Bulley (MSL quote), Australia
<2006-12-29 00:00>
This is a deep and wide book about human nature, why you are you and I am me. The premise of the Blank Slate, that our nature is infinitely plastic and entirely formed by environmental factors, is refuted in this book. Instead, the author proposes a somewhat flexible genetic template modified by the environment, within definite, but not fully understood parameters. In the past, biological determinism has been tainted by fatalistic views on our inherent goodness or evil and accountability for our behavior. The concept of free will, its influence on our behavior and moral codes is a highly political and emotive topic so buckle up tight for the ride.
He spends many pages covering this aspect of human science, showing how and why, clearly unsubstantiated theories like the Blank Slate, the Ghost in the Machine, the Noble Savage, have endured, and in becoming part of folklore had an ongoing impact upon the education, political and economic systems of the West.
Pinker slaughters many sacred cows, but this is no bloodbath. Dismembering religious, scientific and political bigotry in the search for knowledge, it is a crisp, rational attack. A banquet of disciplines get skewered - psychology, religion, evolution, politics, philosophy, all of which offer conflicting explanations for human nature. Racism, sexism et al, are discussed in search of the ultimate `ism' - truth. These are controversial topics, so you're sure to disagree with some. But the logic is compelling and you will be hard pressed to justify an opposing view.
A person with a razor sharp intellect, Pinker keeps the book clear, logical and jargon free, however it is not a trivial read. The breadth of topic and logic is quite staggering, making it a significant journey of 430 pages, yet few words are wasted, each page offering something of relevance. Accessible to the lay reader this book will also serve well as an academic text, so thorough is its approach and content.
Predictably, the author takes a moral stance, defining morality itself as an external and independent entity, in spite of citing numerous examples of moral relativity that societies' exhibit. I found this at odds with the objective science in the book.
Although Pinker does not introduce any single mind wrenching concept in his book, as Richard Dawkins does in "The Selfish Gene", the perspective is so clear and comprehensive, if you are looking for a single book on nature vs nurture, you will not do better than this. |
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An American reader (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-29 00:00>
The effects of childhood to a person's life all the way to adulthood can be explained by Chaos Theory, which teaches us "sensitivity to initial conditions." This means that powerful childhood influences affects us as we go through life which affects our path in life all the way to adulthood. This is because childhood creates a "ripple effect" where one condition leads to another and so forth. Even in a example diagram of Chaos Theory examining the initial conditions of movements of clouds and numbers inputed in a computer a scientist like EDWARD LORENZ could theoretically predict the outcome based on the initial numbers inputed in the computer, but any slight changes in the sequence of numbers could produce a much different ending. This is what happened in 1960, when he left his computer he wanted to save on time and paper print out so he started the sequence in the middle instead of the beginning...one hour later when he came back he saw that the resulting sequence of numbers was highly divergent from his previous sequence of numbers, that is when he found out that he inputed decimal numbers slightly different from the original decimal numbers. So just like in the sequence of life we have a choice now instead of having a harder choice later, for if you don't think hard about the result now you would have harder choices later on for the effects COMPOUNDS. Childhood has a powerful effect so think hard now about your future before its late! |
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Tony Smith (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-29 00:00>
I came to The Blank Slate having been most impressed by Pinker's The Language Instinct and while the newer book added some useful insights it also disappointed in a couple of areas.
Pinker seems to have convinced himself he is being balanced by attacking both the "blank slate" assumption he ascribes to the Left and the "nobel savage" assumption he ascribes to the Right, though when he goes as far as to suggest that the Nazis were no worse than the Marxists, you have to be concerned as to how much he has been caught up by the hysterics of the resurgent Right. He manages to stretch his net to encompass every imaginable atrocity that could possibly be attributed to authoritarian regimes flying Marxist flags while failing to mention the many other atrocious authoritarian regimes which would deny any association with Marxism, save the Nazis.
But essentially Pinker is trying to mount an updated defence of E.O. Wilson's oft mistakenly criticized notion of "human nature", and that is certainly a worthy goal as the denial of human nature is a road to delusion.
Yet even there Pinker seems to have been seduced by the anti-intellectual fashions of the moment, going to some length to try to legitimize the idea that assured retribution is the natural human way to keep a lot more than psychopaths in check.
Personally, I don't see that we have reason to confine our thinking to a polarized spectrum between the excessive relativism of the Left, which brings us political correctness and equal outcomes, and the naive realism of the Right which proclaims absolute values of right and wrong, good and evil. Rather I see relativism as the first imperfect step beyond realism from where we need to take not Pinker's three-quarters of a step backwards but rather another full step in a completely different direction to a more systemic understanding of the way the world works, both naturally and socially. I expect Pinker might protest that such understanding does not come naturally to many humans and could easily find plenty of supporting data, but from there a case can at least be made that trusting a broad and transparent elite, such as the open source software movement, is more likely to help us share this planet in relative comfort than the naive trust that in-groups will continue to expand so as to take in not just six billion plus humans but also all those other critters essential to a healthy global environment. I don't expect Pinker really wants the world to continue in a perpetual state of government by intimidation, but that is what The Blank Slate seems to be trying to legitimize.
Those reservations aside, Pinker certainly lines up a lot of clear evidence, and a few interesting rhetorical devices, against the blank slate and the nobel savage.
He also hypothesises an interesting candidate to account for the 50% of variation between individuals across a range of psychological tests that cannot be attributed to genetic inheritance. His claim that parenting sans genetics has so small an influence as to defy measurement is not winning him many friends, although the data certainly seems to support it. However his hypothesis that the bulk of the remaining variation can be traced to peer relations needs to be scrutinized very carefully.
Even as an avowed atheist and double-sided skeptic, I am bemused that Pinker totally ignores any possibility that the development of embryonic brains might be influenced by electro-magnetic patterns in the world due to the passage of other lives. Even without conjuring up a spiritual dimension, any honest student of natural history must admit that there is still a lot more we don't know about the workings of the world at such levels. If it was not so far beyond the scope of this review, I'd be tempted to spell out the symbiogenesis case for there being more going on in the development of mind than can be accounted by inheritance and overt social interaction, be the later peer or parenting.
I also took the chance during the southern summer to try to observe the evolution of peer relations, both amongst younger humans and, through fortuitous opportunity, some avian species. In retrospect, the biggest problem I have with the peer hypothesis is that much of the psychological variation seems to manifest itself well before much is worked out between peers. Certainly there can be an edge to peer interactions which is as shaping as any parental relationship, but so also there is an edge to early explorations of the natural and built environments. The jury should probably stay out a while on this one. |
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1 2 | Total 2 pages 18 items |
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