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. Fifty to seventy percent of the variation between individuals - in intelligence, in personality, in political leanings, or just about any other mental character you care to name - derives from the genes; zero to ten percent derives from the home environment; and the mysterious remainder is due to chance or to non-parental environment.

We have been conditioned in recent decades to think of both these contentions as shocking. They violate two precepts Pinker designates the "sacred doctrines in modern intellectual life." He calls them The Blank Slate (with a nod to Locke), and The Noble Savage (with a nod to Rousseau.) The first holds that ideas, likes, dislikes, and personalities are all the result of what Locke called "sense impressions", that is, they are all imprinted on us by our environments. The second is a little more modest, but forms the seductive core of the first, because we'd all like it to be true. It holds that all our unpleasant ideas, likes, dislikes, and neurotic tics are forced by a wicked society upon an infant slate which is, if not blank, devoid of all blemish.

Pinker spends the first hundred pages tracing the lineage of these sacred doctrines (and of a third, neither so carefully examined nor so carefully defined, which he calls The Ghost in the Machine. The philosophers who originated the phrase were trying to deny the reality of consciousness, but what Pinker is trying to deny turns out to be narrower - essentially, the doctrine that whatever biological nature we may have can be overriden by a soul or self with a free will independent of biology.) He explores what has made the three doctrines attractive to all of us, but especially to the academic left, and the deep fears which have made it taboo, as E.O. Wilson found to his cost, to contradict them.

He then explains, carefully and (at least with respect to the first two) convincingly, why the fears in question are groundless - and why we should rather fear the ill effects of suppressing this new knowledge about human nature.

Finally, he takes up in a series of individual chapters several of the hot-button political and social issues that are affected by the existence of an objective human nature, and by the largely genetic basis of most human differences: the source of the left/right divide in politics, the root causes of violence, what objective gender differences (and the biological influences bearing on rape) do and do not mean for public policy, the coming irrelevance of the child-rearing advice industry, and a rather curmudgeonly take on what he sees as the well-deserved unpopularity of avant-garde art.

The child-rearing chapter is particularly eye-opening, while the violence chapter offers some fairly fresh ideas, not so much on its origins, which are the same for us as for chimpanzees, but on the variables affecting its expression. Also notable is Pinker's calm, complete demolition, on strictly biological grounds, of the notion that an embryo is "ensouled" at the moment of conception. (Perhaps still more notable, and indicative of the book's even tenor for all its polemics, is his refusal to draw any pro-choice conclusion from that.)

It's a joy to see some of Pinker's more irrational targets, from die-hard Marxism to the rejection of science itself by "critical theory" to the bromide that rape isn't "about" sexual desire, skewered with such swift and classical neatness. The longer lasting pleasures will come from a leisurely unpacking and sifting of all his positive conjectures, conclusions, and insights. It's a book you can zip through in a couple of nights, or return to for thought-fodder for years.


A Treatise On Human Nature for Our Times   October 5, 2002
 179 out of 214 found this review helpful

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.


Nobody believes in the blank slate any more   October 13, 2002
 101 out of 169 found this review helpful

Although The Blank Slate is beautifully written, it is an exercise in polemics rather than a balanced discussion. Pinker presents other points of view only in caricature, apparently with the goal of persuading the reader, not informing him. That the mind is a "blank slate" is defended by no modern scientist, least of all the behaviorists, for whom innate reinforcers are the mainspring of learning. But whatever our innate predispositions, the contributions of culture are hardly superficial. In the face of the most unambiguous biological imperatives, monks embrace celibacy, anorexic girls starve themselves, angry fathers murder their families, and young men in their sexual prime blow themselves up in Tel Aviv and New York. Evidently the slate can be overwritten. It is just such considerations, not a denial of human nature, that underlie the idealistic concern with the effects of individual experience. This book is an op-ed piece, not a thoughtful discussion of a complex topic.


An important book for the modern world   January 15, 2003
 80 out of 94 found this review helpful

Steven Pinker is a prominent member of a new cohort of science populizers with genuine scientific credentials (which includes, in the area of brain studies, such authors as Joseph LeDoux, Antonio Damasio, Daniel Dennett). His latest book is by far his most political therefore his most important. As it turns out, the data show that we have much in common as members of the human species, and the news is not all bad.

In the Blank Slate, Pinker directly addresses the major ideological impediments which prevent the widespread adoption of an enlightened, scientifically valid view of humanity. People have opposed the idea of human nature, Pinker argues, due to the adherence to three ideas: the Blank Slate, the Noble Savage, and the Ghost in the Machine.

After presenting empirical and philosophical arguments against this trio of ideas, Pinker turns to directly addressing the fears accompany the denial of human nature. Specifically, people fear that human nature bolsters the acceptance of inequality (and hence injustice) and prevents progress and perfectability of people and society. Pinker counters that such fears are founded upon an exaggerated and overly simplistic view of the manner in which our genes influence our thoughts and actions. Such influences always remain beneath our consciousness and volition; they are one of the ultimate causes of our behavior, but never the sole cause or the immediate cause. This relates to another major fear: the fear of biological determinism, the absence of free will. Pinker also discusses the fear of nihilism, the fear that once our actions and preferences are understood to be rooted in biology, our lives will loose meaning and morality. Again, Pinker shows that such fears are founded upon misunderstanding and oversimplification, as well as the confusion between ultimate casues and mechanism, on the one hand, and the immediate and proximate causes on the other.

In general, many progressives on the political Left have embraced the Blank Slate and the Noble Savage to provide the foundation for ideologies of cultural transformation and reform, in the service of redressing injustices and inequalities. Unfortunately, as Pinker demonstrates, the evidence (as well as our own common sense experiences) indicates that we are neither Blank Slates or Noble Savages. The sum total of our inherited tendencies, our human nature, is neither wicked or noble. Nonetheless, there is the fear, found on both the political Left and Right, that embracing human nature also means normalizing and sanctioning the unseamly side of ourselves. But, as Pinker argues, "natural" is an empirical judgement; "good" is a moral one.

Some critics have argued that no one really believes in the Blank Slate any more, and that Pinker is fighting "straw men." I think, however, that Pinker does a good job of showing that Blank Slate positions are often the implicit default in matters of public discussion and policy making; Blank Slate ideas continue to misguide efforts, even when the Blank Slate is not intentionally invoked.

The third notion which Pinker disputes, the Ghost in the Machine, is far more important to people committed to the political Right, because the Ghost is frequently equated with the immaterial spiritual soul. The major implication of modern neuroscience has been that the workings of the human mind can be adequately explained by the workings of the human brain, as Pinker has shown in more detail in his previous book, How the Mind Works. The more we learn about brain function, the more it has taken over the job description previously assigned to the soul or to the Ghost. The Ghost remains in the mind of many as the only possible foundation for Free Will, and hence meaning and morality. Free will and an inherited human nature are not necessarily contradictory, however, as long as one avoids a simplistic biological determinism in which genes directly control our actions and opinions.

In place of all these fears, Pinker constructs an empirically-supported view of our human nature, addressing in turn 1) the reliabilty and veracity of our perception and our understanding of the world; 2) the sources of interpersonal conflict as well as the sources of a realistic (non-supernatural) morality; 3) the hot-buton topics of race, gender, violence, and child rearing. This is were some of the real meat, the empirical data, is to be found; and this is where Pinker makes good on his claims that accepting the idea of human nature is neither dangerously reactionary or bebasing.

An acquaintance of mine wondered just who this book was intended for, since it appeared to be written above the level of your average person. So be it: Science can be popularized by good writing and clear thinking, but it cannot be greatly simplified without significant loss of coherence and cogency. The book is intended for us: for whoever has the motivation to pick it up or to read this review. If you've read this far, do yourself a favor and read Pinker's book. It's not only fascinating and well-argued; it's important.


Human Nature Makes a Comeback   April 9, 2003
 59 out of 66 found this review helpful

The Blank Slate deserves all the praise it has received. Steven Pinker presents an extremely eloquent, well reasoned, comprehensive and entertaining renunciation of the holy trinity of social science - the blank slate, noble savage, and ghost in the machine; ideologies that have created serious obstacles to the application of modern scientific research in genetics, biology and psychology to a better understanding of who we really are.

The more widely this book is read, the sooner we can increase the effectiveness with which we understand and tackle real personal and social problems from a fact-based and positive perspective of human nature.

The book is academically very strong and the arguments are well presented and convincing, so much so that this book will doubtless receive future credit for putting the study of human nature back onto the social science agenda. Steven Pinker may surprise you, perhaps provoke you but he will definitely educate you, entertain you and leave you thinking about human nature in a very new way.