Book review By catherine ousey

The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature Steven Pinker Viking Penguin 2002

Is "nature versus nurture" a dead argument? Not according to Steven Pinker, Professor of Psychology at MIT. "The refusal to acknowledge human nature is like the Victorians' embarrassment about sex, only worse: it distorts our science and scholarship, our public discourse and our day-to-day-lives." Pinker's common sense viewpoint is that intellectuals of both the left and the right are denying the reality of human nature in spite of scientific evidence to the contrary. The politics of the right posits an innately wicked human nature, original sin, for example. Their solution to the problem is more "law and order." The left leaning tend to believe that culture, the family and society create human behaviour. In other words, all humans are born good and bad behaviour is learned and can therefore be unlearned. They deny that human nature has any heritable characteristics. Pinker disagrees with both of these concepts. In the final section of the book Pinker examines some of society's "hot buttons" such as the sexes, the family, the education of children, violence. He examines each of these current social problems with his concept of human nature. He concedes that his take on these issues is controversial. Pinker reports that many academics who espouse the belief of innate human nature have been subjected to abuse and harassment. Some humanists might be uncomfortable with the thought that any part of human personality or behaviour is in the genes. But, whether one believes in innate personality or not, whether one accepts his arguments about exactly how much is inherited or denies them, this book has the potential to encourage debate and research. Following in the path of Steven Pinker's two previous best sellers, How the Mind Works and The Language Instinct, The Blank Slate is witty and clear with great insight into human nature. I have to agree with Pinker - the "nature versus nurture" debate is not dead. The debate should be kept open and science should be used to discover the shape of human nature. Only then will we be able to begin improving human society.