Steven Pinker - The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature

Steven Pinker is Johnstone Professor of Psychology at Harvard University. His research on visual cognition and the psychology of language has earned prizes from the National Academy of Sciences and the American Psychological Association. Pinker has also received many awards for his teaching at MIT and for his books How the Mind Works (which was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize) and The Language Instinct . He is an elected fellow of several scientific societies, associate editor of Cognition , and a member of the usage panel of the American Heritage Dictionary . He has written for The New York Times , Time , The New Yorker , The New Republic , Slate , and Technology Review .

For The Blank Slate , Pinker received the 2004 William James Book Prize and the Eleanor Maccoby Book Prize, both from the American Psychological Association, as well as the Yorkshire Post Book Prize.

A brilliant and forceful summaryA well-informed and well-written account of [human] limitations, [written with] a graceful interleaving of scientific and literary sources.[This] fine book helps with a task that we all must begin to take seriouslyCan it be that we have finally grown up?

Melvin Konner, The American Prospect

This is a brilliant book. It is beautifully written, and addresses profound issues with courage and clarity. There is nothing else like it, and it is going to have an impact that extends well beyond the scientific academy.

Paul Bloom, Trends in Cognitive Sciences

Steven Pinker has written an extremely good bookclear, well argued, fair, learned, tough, witty, humane, stimulating. I only hope that people study it carefully before rising up ideologically against him. If they do, they will see that the idea of an innately flawed but wonderfully rich human nature is a force for good, not evil.

Colin McGinn, The Washington Post

Steven Pinker is a man of encyclopedic knowledge and an incisive style of argument. His argument in The Blank Slate is that intellectual life in the West, and much of our social and political policy, was increasingly dominated through the twentieth century by a view of human nature that is fundamentally flawed; that this domination has been backed by something that amounts to academic terrorism (he does not put it quite so strongly): and that we would benefit substantially from a more realistic view. Pinkers exposition is thoroughly readable and of enviable clarity. His explanation of such a difficult technical matter as the analysis of variance and regression in twin studies, for example, would be very hard to better. He is not afraid of using strong languagein addition, parts of the book are delightfully funny.

John R. G. Turner, The Times Literary Supplement

Anyone who has read Pinkers earlier booksincluding How the Mind Works and The Language Instinct will rightly guess that his latest effort is similarly sweeping, erudite, sharply argued, richly footnoted and fun to read. Its also highly persuasive.

Michael Lemonick, Time

[Pinker] makes his main argument persuasively and with great verve. The Blank Slate 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. If nothing else, Mr. Pinkers book is a wonderfully readable taster of new research, much of it ingenious, designed to show that many more of our emotional biases and mental aptitudes than previously thought are hard-wired or, to use the old word, innate. This is a breath of air for a topic that has been politicized for too long.

The Economist

[Pinker] wades resolutely into the comforting gloom surrounding these not quite forbidden topics and calmly, lucidly marshals the facts to ground his strikingly subversive Darwinian claimssubversive not of any of the things we properly hold dear but subversive of the phony protective layers of misinformation surrounding them. My reservations with Pinkers view [will be resolved]in the bright light of rational inquiry that he brings to these important topics.

Dan Dennett, The Times Literary Supplement

The Blank Slate brilliantly delineates the current state of play in the nature-nurture debate. Read it to understand not just the moral and aesthetic blindness of your friends, but the misguided idealism of nations. A magnificent and timely work .

Fay Weldon, The Daily Telegraph

[Pinker] points us in the direction of a more productive debate, a debate in which the implications of science are confronted forthrightly and not simply wished away by politicized scientists.

Francis Fukuyama, The Wall Street Journal

The Blank Slate isa stylish piece of work. I wont say it is better than The Language Instinct or How the Mind Works , but it is as goodwhich is very high praise indeed. What a superb thinker and writer he is: what a role model to young scientists. And how courageous to buck the liberal trend in science, while remaining in person the best sort of liberal. Pinker is a star, and the world of science is lucky to have him.

Richard Dawkins, The Times Literary Supplement

The Blank Slate is not dismal at all, but unexpectedly bracing. It feels a bit like being burgled. Youre shocked, your things are gone, but you cant help thinking about how youre going to replace them. What Steven Pinker has done is break into our common human home and steal our illusions.

John Morrish, The Independent

As a brightly lighted path between what we would like to believe and what we need to know, [ The Blank Slate ] is required reading. Pinker presents an unanswerable case for accepting that man can be, as he is, both wired and free.

Frederic Raphael, Los Angeles Times

Pinkers thinking and writing are first-rate; maybe even better than that. The Blank Slate is much-needed, long overdue andif you are interested in what might be called the human nature warssomewhere between that old standby, required reading, and downright indispensable. It is unlikely to change the minds of those who are rigidly committed to the blank slate perspective, but for anyone whose nature includes even a modicum of open-mindedness, it should prove a revelation.

David Barash, Human Nature Review

Pinker is one of those rare writers who is at once persuasive and comprehensive, informative and entertaining.

Kevin Shapiro, Commentary

The fight for a separation of politics from science is an eminently sensible, logical, and ultimately humanistic task, and it took someone as brave as Pinker to dedicate himself to it.[This is a] necessary book, a book that in a more truthful intellectual climateone open to the idea that any knowledge about ourselves can only enhance our ability to act well and compassionatelywould not have had to be written. In this climate, however, we should be grateful that it was.

Daniel Smith, The Boston Globe

The Blank Slate deserves to be read carefully and with an open mindThis landmark book makes an important contribution to the argument about nature vs. nurture in humans. Whether or not most readers end up on Pinkers side of the fence, one can hope that his thoroughness and reasoning will shed light into the darker corners where research has been suppressed by taboos, and where freedom of thought and speech have been inhibited by fear of consequences for asking forbidden questions.

Nancy Jeannette Friedlander, The San Diego Union-Tribune

This book is a modern magnum opus. The scholarship alone is mind-boggling, a monument of careful research, meticulous citation, breadth of input from diverse fields, great writing and humor.

Tom Paskal, The Montreal Gazette

A delightfully provocative readA constantly dynamic, if tacit, exchange between the author and his readers.