![]() ![]() Pinker is a unifier, someone who ties a lot of big ideas together. This month marks the publication of such a book, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature by MIT research psychologist Steven Pinker. By exploring the political and moral colorings of discoveries about what makes us tick, we can have a more honest science and a less fearful intellectual milieu.Įvery few years a book is published that commands our attention and causes us to consider questions that challenge our basic assumptions about ourselves. ![]() ![]() And these reactions affect both the day-to-day conduct of science and the public appreciation of the science. The main question is: "Why are empirical questions about how the mind works so weighted down with political and moral and emotional baggage? Why do people believe that there are dangerous implications to the idea that the mind is a product of the brain, that the brain is organized in part by the genome, and that the genome was shaped by natural selection?" This idea has been met with demonstrations, denunciations, picketings, and comparisons to Nazism, both from the right and from the left. ![]()
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