Short description
What is the truth about human nature? Steven Pinker argues that our usual explanations of human behaviour - stated most clearly in the human sciences of psychology, ethics and politics - tend to deny what is now undeniable: the role of an inherited human nature.
Long description
What is the truth about human nature? Are we each born a blank slate upon which experience is written? Steven Pinker argues that our usual explanations of human behaviour - stated most clearly in the human sciences of psychology, ethics and politics - tend to deny what is now undeniable: the role of an inherited human nature. Differences in personality or achievement, whether seen among races, ethnic groups, sexes or individuals, are routinely explained away as due not to differences in innate constitution but differences in experience. This work argues otherwise.
Review
'A magnificent and timely work' Fay Weldon, Daily Telegraph, Books of the Year; 'A passionate defence of the enduring power of human nature... both life-affirming and deeply satisfying' Tim Lott, Daily Telegraph, Books of the Year; Reading Pinker is one of the biggest favours I've ever done my brain Richard Dawkins
Table of contents
- The blank slate, the noble savage and the ghost in the machine: the official theory
- silly putty
- the last wall to fall
- culture vultures
- the slate's last stand. Fear and loathing: political scientists
- the Holy Trinity. Human nature with a human face: the fear of inequality
- the fear of imperfectability
- the fear of determinism
- the fear of nihilism. Know thyself: in touch with reality
- out of our depths
- the many roots of our suffering
- the sanctimonious animal. Hot buttons: politics
- violence
- gender
- children
- the arts. The voice of the species. Appendix: Donald E. Brown's list of human universals.