Penguin Group(CA) The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature, Penguin Press Science

Controversial, yet compassionate. Very informative, but also a ton of fun to read. Those are rare combinations. You won’t be disappointed.

As noted by other reviewers, this book is as much about the tides of toxic social ideology we're all wading through, as it is about human biology or human behavioral development. That said, there's enough detail here on the subject of classic twin studies, heritability, and related topics to provide the proper grounding for Pinker's main argument: which is that the idea of a blank slate — at this point in our scientific journey as humans — has literally no legs to stand on. Those pushing the blank slate narrative basically missed the memo: nature vs. nurture is a settled match and nurture (mostly) got its butt kicked.* Quick Diversion *If you follow the science, the question of "nature or nurture", leads to a simple answer: "yes, but far more nature than nurture." Yes, one's environment and the manner in which they are raised can directly affect personality and other aspects, but it doesn't and could never build a person out of nothingness. In short, nurture's impact is nowhere close to that of our genetic makeup. Based on what we know now, who we are — our personality traits, and our innate strengths and weaknesses — are about 65% genetic. Another 20% is a function of human developmental biology (i.e. given the same sperm and egg, all sorts of things happen within the human body during that 9 months which make it impossible for those two cells to develop the same way twice).All those trillions of cellular operations that began you and continued outside the womb until roughly age 24 — simultaneously encoded and guided by our DNA and RNA, and also subject to a defined-range-of-randomness that occurs inside all organisms — had a direct impact on the specifics of your brain's wiring and by extension your way of perceiving and thinking, and thus on your behavior.The rest of who and what we are can logically be attributed to "nurture" — our families, environmental advantages or disadvantages, and the like. But in the end it wasn't much of a contest once we started understanding human genetics and neuroscience at a deeper level.* End Diversion *Pinker could've filled the whole book with evidence related to biology and environment, overloadig us with stats and quotes from various experts, but the book is about more than that. Pinker is a brilliant mind who pulls no punches when it comes to the zealotry of the blank slaters, but he does it in a way that is thoughtful and measured — something pretty rare these days. For this reason alone you should read the book to get some perspective that you are unlikely to get elsewhere.Ultimately Pinker wants us to recognize two things when thinking about these topics:1) The science bears out that we are who we are, largely because of our genes and the molecular processes at work in the human body during embryonic and childhood development, with a modest amount accounted for by human experience (how and where we are raised)... and...2) It is not necessary to take the woke approach to understand human development and human behavior. We can speak out on the social and societal issues that need addressing, without twisting settled biological science into a pretzel and adding a side-helping of righteous indignation.

Gut geschrieben, zu empfehlen.

Arrived well packaged

El libro ya tiene casi veinte años, sin embargo su narrativa cobra cada vez mas importancia. Leí The language Instinct hace mucho tiempo y este libro recurre al ejemplo de lenguaje muchas veces para sustentar sus argumentos. Me encanta la forma de escribir de Mr Pinker y The Blank State es muy recomendable.