Book Review: Blank Slate


Blank Slate by Steven Pinker

This is one of the most important books to appear in recent decades. For most of the 20th century, social scientists have engaged in a long and fruitless denial of the biological factors influencing human behavior. Never mind that this denial goes against nearly everything expressed in great literature about human nature; nor that most of human history stands as testimony against it.

Modern social science had allowed itself to be seduced by the notion that human nature is largely malleable. Just think of what would be possible if it were so? Think of the power it would bestow upon the intrepid social scientist. Shelley had called the poets the unintended legislators of mankind. But that is nothing compared to the role of social scientists in the new order, who would not merely legislate for mankind, but would recreate man after their own image, using the latest scientific techniques.

How this appalling pretension of egomaniacal intellectuals remained dominant within secluded groves of academe remains anyone's guess. Fortunately, Pinker, with the help of the latest scientific research, has safely laid the silly-putty vision of human nature to rest. He makes a point of addressing the scare tactics used by the blank slaters to frighten people into believing that human nature scarcely exists. The fact that some aspects of human behavior have genetic antecedents does not, Pinker points out, pave the way for Hitlers and other eugenic and racist maniacs. Nor does it justify every last abuse of the status quo. What it does give us is a more realistic idea of what can and what cannot be achieved through social policy. Limitations do, of course, exist, as the best conservative thinkers have said at least since the time of Burke; but within those limitations there is usually room for modest improvement.

Posted: Fri - December 9, 2005 at 04:49 PM          

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