Thanks pueo - by the way, I've been watching everyone tell you goodnight for a couple of weeks now - makes for fascinating reading at 5 or 6 in the morning! (U.S. EST)
I haven't noticed Blank Slate mentioned anywhere else on a2k, but if you find it let me know - or post the link here if its relevant, thanks.
Pinker's best known work before this may have been
The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language, also a very enriching read. Some of his other books are
How the Mind Works,
Words and Rules: The Ingredients of Language, and
Why Our Children Can't Read and What We Can Do About It: A Scientific Revolution in Reading.
The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature is a controversial book, maybe because it takes on both the right and the left.
To get an idea of the controversy behind it, you might read the first three or four of the customer reviews on Amazon, which are uncommonly well thought out and written -
The Blank Slate @Amazon.com
Here is some of the L.A. Times review, Blank Slate was one of their Best Non-Fiction of 2002:
L.A.Times Best Non-Fiction of 2002
". . . Part of Pinker's mission is to repeat that there is no inescapable correlation between facts and human value systems, good or bad. Pinker presents an unanswerable case for accepting that man can be, as he is, both wired and free. Genes do not determine how we use our minds, only the kinds of minds we have. No one has to propagate fairy tales in order to justify a better world. Ashley Montagu's UNESCO resolution, stating that biology supports an ethic of "universal brotherhood" is as baseless as Rousseau's myth of the noble savage. Man is good and bad; man is loving and savage; man is thoughtful and impulsive. The ingredients vary with genetic inheritance. Too bad if that doesn't suit left- or right-wing utopians, but the good news is that man is unrivaled in ingenuity and in ability to learn and adapt. An individual mind can be closed (or held shut); the book of knowledge, and hence society itself, can never be. What we certainly need are critics -- as Pinker himself is -- of reckless conclusions drawn from statistics or from anything else. Such characters used to be the fruit of what was known as the humanities. And "The Blank Slate" -- at once tolerant and polemic, uncompromising and open-minded -- offers a notable and instructive contribution to them. As a brightly lighted path between what we would like to believe and what we need to know, it is required reading."
Here is an excerpt of some of the critical reviews of the book, from Amazon:
The Blank Slate @Amazon.com
" . . . 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 and instead have embraced three 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 provides calm in the stormy debate by disentangling the political and moral issues from the scientific ones. He shows that equality, compassion, responsibility, and purpose have nothing to fear from discoveries about an innately organized psyche. Pinker shows that the new sciences of mind, brain, genes, and evolution, far from being dangerous, are complementing observations 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: irreverent wit, lucid exposition, and startling insight on matters great and small.
And one more site:
http://www.semcoop.com/detail/0670031518
" . . . Has the blank slate theory become the secular religion of modern intellectual life? In many quarters, nurture has not only won over nature, but any suggestion that human nature, and not society, determines the fate of individuals is seen as shocking and irresponsible. Many proponents of the blank slate theory, a belief that the mind has no innate traits, fear that appeals to human nature can be used to justify inequality, subvert social change, dissolve personal responsibility, and strip life of meaning. Pinker, however, believes that human nature and our genetic makeup while not being the sole determinant of our personality cannot be ignored. In a lucid and balanced study, Pinker examines how the blank slate theory has come to dominate modern intellectual life and how new discoveries in genetics are challenging conventional ideas about human behavior and culture. Pinker shows how a richer conception of human nature provides insight into language, social life, and morality. He also discusses how it can clarify controversies regarding politics, the nature of violence, gender, childrearing, and the arts. His work, sure to garner both praise and controversy, is a stimulating and fascinating contribution to discussions regarding the age-old nature vs. nurture debate."
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