Pinker, Steven :

Steven Pinker is one of the world's leading authorities on language and the mind. His popular and highly praised books include Words and Rules, How the Mind Works, and The Language Instinct. The recipient of several major awards for his teaching and scientific research, Pinker is Peter de Florez professor of psychology in the department of brain and cognitive sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

"Pinker presents an unanswerable case for accepting that man can bem as he is, both wired and free."

--Los Angeles Times Book Review (front cover)

"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."

--The Economist

"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."

--San Diego Union Tribune

"[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."

--Francis Fukuyama, in the Wall Street Journal

"The best book on human nature that I or anyone else will ever read. Truly a magnificent job."

--Matt Ridley, author of Genome

"A remarkable book--stimulating, fearless, immensely learned, and a pleasure to read."

--Orlando Patterson, sociologist, Harvard University and the author of The Ordeal of Integration

"In a work of outstanding clarity, sheer brilliance, and unmitigated good sense, Steven Pinker banishes forever fears that a biological understanding of human nature threatens humane values."

--Helena Cronin, author of The Ant and the Peacock

"With a powerful combination of erudition, style, and courage, Steven Pinker shatters taboos on all sides as he restores the concept of human nature to its proper place--at the center of how we think about ourselves and and our communities."

--Michael Lind, author of The Radical Center

""The ideas in this book introduce exciting new considerations for conflict resolution and peacemaking that go deeper than conventional analyses."

--M. James Wilkinson, former deputy U.S. representative, United Nations Security Council

"This book is vitally important; Pinker deserves nothing but gratitude for taking on the topic."

--Glenn Loury, Boston University

Penguin Group, Inc. Web Site, Feb., 2003

Our conceptions of human nature affect everything aspect of our lives, from child-rearing to politics to morality to the arts. Yet many fear that scientific discoveries about innate patterns of thinking and feeling may be used to justify inequality, to subvert social change, and to dissolve personal responsibility.

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.

Part 1: The Blank Slate, the Noble Savage, and the Ghost in the Machine

Chapter 1: The Official Theory
Chapter 2: Silly Putty
Chapter 3: The Last Wall to Fall
Chapter 4: Culture Vultures
Chapter 5: The Slate's Last Stand

Part II: Fear and Loathing

Chapter 6: Political Scientists
Chapter 7: The Holy Trinity

Part III: Human Nature with a Human Face

Chapter 8: The Fear of Inequality
Chapter 9: The Fear on Imperfectibility
Chapter 10: The Fear of Determinism
Chapter 11: The Fear of Nihilism

Part IV: Know Thyself

Chapter 12: In Touch with Reality
Chapter 13: Out of Our Depths
Chapter 14: The Many Roots of Our Suffering
Chapter 15: The Sanctimonious Animal

Part V: Hot Buttons

Chapter 16: Politics
Chapter 17: Violence
Chapter 18: Gender
Chapter 19: Children
Chapter 20: The Arts

Part VI: The Voice of the Species

Appendix: Donald E. Brown's List of Human Universals
Notes
References
Index