The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature Kindle Edition

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Steven Pinker (Author)
4.1 out of 5 stars 348 customer reviews
ISBN-13: 978-0142003343
ISBN-10: 0142003344
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Product Details

  • File Size: 4386 KB
  • Print Length: 525 pages
  • Publisher: Penguin Books; Reprint edition (August 26, 2003)
  • Publication Date: August 26, 2003
  • Language: English
  • ASIN: B000QCTNIM
  • Text-to-Speech: Enabled
  • X-Ray:
  • Word Wise: Enabled
  • Lending: Not Enabled
  • Enhanced Typesetting: Enabled
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #60,354 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

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Customer Reviews

Top Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 starsBecause we're all relatives, it's not all relative
By Royce E. Buehler on October 20, 2002
Format: Hardcover
Cultural relativism, the intellectual underpinnings of which rest on a faith (whether acknowledged or not) in the supremacy of nurture over nature, has had a long run. But has its boiler run out of steam at last?
In his latest and by far his most ambitious work, Steven Pinker tells us, in a lively but dispassionate voice of sweet reason, that the answer is yes. His demolition of cultural relativism may well make him a lot of enemies. He's touched on many of these same ideas before, but now he is spelling out the consequences - and the incompatibility of those consequences with the received wisdom of most of the last century.
His fundamental message is: Yes, Virginia, there is a human nature. People of all cultures are born with a host of inborn predispositions - to acquire language and music, to favor kin over strangers, to desire sex and to be ashamed of it, to value even trades and to punish cheaters, and dozens more. Our common nature springs from our common biology; it is not very malleable, and it is not "socially constructed." Cultural diversity is marvelous, but it is all a variation on an immutable theme; and there have never been any human cultures free of war, of greed, or of prescribed gender roles. (Any more than there have ever been any free of conflict resolution techniques, altruism, and shared parenting.)
His secondary theme is that the differences between people, so much smaller than what we have in common, are also primarily biologically determined. A juggernaut of data has finally put the nature/nurture controversy to rest, at least from a scientific standpoint, and the final score is pretty much nature one, nurture zero.Read more ›
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5.0 out of 5 starsEveryone, not just science junkies, should read this!
By Kevin Currie-Knight VINE VOICE on October 12, 2002
Format: Hardcover
Wow! About two years ago, I read Pinker's 'The Language Instinct.' Barely a year had passed before I read his 'How the Mind Works' and 'Words and Rules.' Each, of course, was amazing, erudite, well-researched and completely entertaining. I didn't think it possible but Pinker has gracefully outdone himself. Not only entertaining, this book is one that HAD to be written and I'm sure glad Steven Pinker thought the same!
The title, 'The Blank Slate' is one of three commonplace theories that Pinker sees as contributing to the misdirection of politics, society and science in general. In brief, the belief that we are all interchangeable tabula rasas (the blank slate), that we are born with only good instincts only to be corrupted by society (the noble savage) and the existence of 'higher' spirit or soul in each human body (the ghost in the machine.) It's not hard to see why the blank slate is a bogus theory. Humans, as products, of biology have innate urges and are in a sense, genetically INCLINED towrds certain behavior. Why is the blank slate dangerous? Belief that crime can be 'unlearned' through rehabilitation, that 'reality' is simply a synonym for 'conditioned belief' that can be reframed at will, and that there is no thing as measured intellegence- all of these beliefs lead to socially disasterous consequences.
It should be said that the authors goal is not shock us, stir up unnecessary contraversy or get off on offending his readers. This is not an anti-PC book; in fact, Pinker is admirably calm and well-reasoned. He discusses sciences relations to social policy, but doesn't preach about or disclose his political leanings. He talks about feminism but where he comes out against 'gender feminism,' he has nothing but praise for feminisms goals of parity and equality.Read more ›
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5.0 out of 5 starsA Treatise On Human Nature for Our Times
By john o. mcginnis on October 5, 2002
Format: Hardcover
Steven Pinker's book is a wonderful explication of what we now know about human nature. As such, it mounts a powerful attack on postmodernist attemps to argue that humans are completely malleable and socially constructed. The book reminds me most of David Hume's A Treatise on Human Nature. Like Hume, Pinker attacks the reigning orthodoxies and pieties of the politically and religiously correct. Because of such sacrilege, he will be attacked as an immoralist, just as Hume was. But like Hume, Pinker is in reality engaged in a deeply moral enterprise. By dispelling myths that are often propogated by ideologues to advance their agenda (such as the myth that the average man and woman differ only anatomically and not in their desires and interests), he makes it easier to understand the real costs and benefits of different social policies (such as quotas for women, whether in college athletics or on the job). By helping us understand the biologicaly wellsprings of our conflicts with others, be they parents, children, friends, or mates, he provides an important step to living with them more humanely and kindly. In perhaps its most completely original chapter, the book even uses his a theory of biologically shaped human nature to diagnose the discontents of much modern art, and if taken to heart, may show a way out of the cul de sac in which those who claim the mind is a blank slate have trapped many proud artistic traditions. The Blank Slate is a vaccination against the characteristic follies and errors of postmodernism and as such should be required reading for all students at our often diseased universities.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 starsExcellent

The book explains, among other things, why totalitarian ideologies fail. We are not born with blank slates that can be programmed with a doctrine. Read more

Published 1 month ago by Petri
5.0 out of 5 starsA truly awesome book. It's amazing how entrenched the 3 dogmas ...

A truly awesome book. It's amazing how entrenched the 3 dogmas are on both the Right and the Left. After you read it, political arguments never quite look the same.

Published 2 months ago by Spencer Dupre
5.0 out of 5 starsGood research for new conclusions in violence, parenting and the arts.

This book updates us on several levels of neuropsychology. What works and what is a myth is exposed in several areas of life including parenting, arts, and violence. Read more

Published 2 months ago by Bob
1.0 out of 5 starsGarbage

Pinker is good at taking someone else's ideas and repackaging them with decent writing. That wouldn't bother me as to show me, the layman, a broad catalogue to explore. Read more

Published 3 months ago by Rotten Puppy
5.0 out of 5 starsPinker's writing is excellent. He leads the reader through complex...

A challenging read, but well worth plowing through. Pinker's writing is excellent. He leads the reader through complex arguments with clarity while keeping a casual style and... Read more

Published 3 months ago by MJS
4.0 out of 5 starsA book that deeded to be written and deserves to be read Ute Wii

As I have personally experienced some of the situations included for too long unhappiness has been caused by the belief that people are able to be moulded.

Published 5 months ago by Ken McEwen
5.0 out of 5 starsA fascinating review of the Nature vs. Nurture debate ...

A fascinating review of the Nature vs. Nurture debate, debunking the feel-good, head-in-the-sand consensus dogma that is the Blank Slate and underlies just about every asinine... Read more

Published 6 months ago by Hojat I Salehi
5.0 out of 5 starsloved it!

loved it.

Published 6 months ago by Peter Silva
4.0 out of 5 starsFour Stars

Book for college.

Published 6 months ago by Sue Acosta
5.0 out of 5 starsA Must-read

One cannot be ignorant of the issues and research findings reviewed in this book. Pinker is a very readable expositor of very deed and challenging ideas. Read more

Published 6 months ago by Robert B. Miller

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