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3.96 AVERAGE
3.96 AVERAGE
Pinker challenges the idea that our minds are blank slates at birth, a philosophy put forth by Locke. Pinker support his case with a survey of recent medical, biological, and anthropological research. Pinker says that while we have clung to the idea to maintain that all human beings are all equal at birth, we can not discount the role nature/genetics plays in our makeup and our behavior. Not usually my type of read, was sort of thrust upon me as a book club read, but still enjoyed it.
challenging
informative
reflective
slow-paced
Interesante, denso y con muchas referencias documentales. Puede que sea porque en mi entorno no es así o porque se refiere a un fenómeno de su tiempo, pero no veo en la sociedad esa inclinación tan fuerte a decir que el ser humano es una tabla rasa como se da a entender en el libro (lo del "buen salvaje" sigue vigente). Pinker hace trampa a veces, atacando ideas en puntos débiles para descartarlas por completo y aprovechando para sustituirlas por las suyas propias sin dar un marco teórico para aceptarlas, y también cae en prejuiciosos lugares comunes a la hora de tratar ciertos temas, en este sentido destaca la sección sobre el arte moderno y la última parte el libro en términos generales. Aún así lo considero un buen libro para adquirir fundamentos en el debate de educación contra naturaleza.
"I'm only human
Of flesh and blood I'm made
Human
Born to make mistakes"
--The Human League, Human
Most of us instinctively feel the acquisition of scientific knowledge follows a linear path, first operating from a solid factual base, and then modifying itself as it goes along in an objective fashion. Ultimately, a common agreeance on a certain topic will be reached, and the findings will translate into well-considered policy.
Ideally, that is how it should work, with scientists serving as neutral observers, freely informing us, the public, on whatever findings they come across, whatever the implications. This is not always what actually happens, of course. Not by a long shot. Ironically - also tellingly -, when it comes to the in-depth study of the human animal, there is active, hostile opprobrium by (a certain school of) social scientists and ideologically motivated activists alike. Scientists who try to find biological causations for certain human behaviours or perceived inequalities are frequently ostracised, pelted by slurs, and made pariah's in their own fields. The sober truth is that the scientific community is not free at all from anti-intellectualism and bullying tactics.
It seems nothing much has changed since the 2002 publication of this book, which I'm informed drew out considerable polemical discourse at the time. I'm not surprised. Anno 2016, the social sciences in Western academia are still infested with social constructivist thinking, with no sign of it abating any time soon. In fact, it might even have reached its zenith, having entrenched itself even further. It's not difficult to make an analogy with creationists. This exemplifies how far we still have to go as a species to attain a higher level of rational thinking, which means being willing to demolish some of our most cherished beliefs. Ego investment still is riding high, it seems.
Biological innateness. Determinism. These terms observably evoke unpleasant feelings in many. However, in order to come face to face with the homo sapiens which, during its brutal evolutionary process, has acquired certain survival - often nasty -instincts, one should let go of such reservations . Funnily enough, it was some of the most prominent Enlightenment thinkers (such as Rousseau) who introduced the blank slate theory. But are we blank slates, almost solely informed by the culture that surrounds us? Hardly, as Pinker shows us -with the aid of a plethora of immensely interesting case studies - in this intellectually dense, yet highly accessible book. Genes and our biological make-up determine our behaviour to a far greater extent than culture or our upbringing ever will. Pinker even goes as far as saying that parental influence on their child(ren)'s formation is pretty much negligible. Peer group interaction is a far more important determining factor.
However, Pinker deftly reasons that even with the ever-expanding, confronting knowledge of the human coming from the exciting fields of neuroscience and evolutionary psychology, there is no need for us to defeatedly resort to fatalism or nihilism. On the contrary, an intimate, unsentimental understanding of what we are will help us enormously in developing a truly humanistic ethos and thus in crafting a pragmatic society which can be beneficial to all of us.
The utopian vision, with its aim to 'mould' the human psyche (social constructivism), the 20th century has adequately shown to only lead us into disaster.
Of flesh and blood I'm made
Human
Born to make mistakes"
--The Human League, Human
Most of us instinctively feel the acquisition of scientific knowledge follows a linear path, first operating from a solid factual base, and then modifying itself as it goes along in an objective fashion. Ultimately, a common agreeance on a certain topic will be reached, and the findings will translate into well-considered policy.
Ideally, that is how it should work, with scientists serving as neutral observers, freely informing us, the public, on whatever findings they come across, whatever the implications. This is not always what actually happens, of course. Not by a long shot. Ironically - also tellingly -, when it comes to the in-depth study of the human animal, there is active, hostile opprobrium by (a certain school of) social scientists and ideologically motivated activists alike. Scientists who try to find biological causations for certain human behaviours or perceived inequalities are frequently ostracised, pelted by slurs, and made pariah's in their own fields. The sober truth is that the scientific community is not free at all from anti-intellectualism and bullying tactics.
It seems nothing much has changed since the 2002 publication of this book, which I'm informed drew out considerable polemical discourse at the time. I'm not surprised. Anno 2016, the social sciences in Western academia are still infested with social constructivist thinking, with no sign of it abating any time soon. In fact, it might even have reached its zenith, having entrenched itself even further. It's not difficult to make an analogy with creationists. This exemplifies how far we still have to go as a species to attain a higher level of rational thinking, which means being willing to demolish some of our most cherished beliefs. Ego investment still is riding high, it seems.
Biological innateness. Determinism. These terms observably evoke unpleasant feelings in many. However, in order to come face to face with the homo sapiens which, during its brutal evolutionary process, has acquired certain survival - often nasty -instincts, one should let go of such reservations . Funnily enough, it was some of the most prominent Enlightenment thinkers (such as Rousseau) who introduced the blank slate theory. But are we blank slates, almost solely informed by the culture that surrounds us? Hardly, as Pinker shows us -with the aid of a plethora of immensely interesting case studies - in this intellectually dense, yet highly accessible book. Genes and our biological make-up determine our behaviour to a far greater extent than culture or our upbringing ever will. Pinker even goes as far as saying that parental influence on their child(ren)'s formation is pretty much negligible. Peer group interaction is a far more important determining factor.
However, Pinker deftly reasons that even with the ever-expanding, confronting knowledge of the human coming from the exciting fields of neuroscience and evolutionary psychology, there is no need for us to defeatedly resort to fatalism or nihilism. On the contrary, an intimate, unsentimental understanding of what we are will help us enormously in developing a truly humanistic ethos and thus in crafting a pragmatic society which can be beneficial to all of us.
The utopian vision, with its aim to 'mould' the human psyche (social constructivism), the 20th century has adequately shown to only lead us into disaster.
Fuck this book. If you want to see Pinker beat up a straw man this is your book. Pinker premise is built on blatant misreadings of other people’s work. It’s so poorly sourced it descends into anecdotes. This book is why people make fun of evolutionary psychology.
I was rereading it for a book club and realized I was wasting my one precious life watching this guy be aggressively wrong.
I was rereading it for a book club and realized I was wasting my one precious life watching this guy be aggressively wrong.
challenging
informative
medium-paced
الكتاب موضوعه مهم
يطرح السؤال الازلي: هل تصرفاتنا ناجمة عن مورثاتنا ام من التربية والمجتمع اللي تربينا بي؟
سؤال عظيم ويحتاجله بحث جبير، الكاتب ما قصر بس المشكلة بالمترجم (محمد الجورا)
ترجمة غير موفقة للاسف قللت هواي من متعة قرائته مع ان الكتاب مكتوب بطريقة ممتعة باللغة الاصلية
يطرح السؤال الازلي: هل تصرفاتنا ناجمة عن مورثاتنا ام من التربية والمجتمع اللي تربينا بي؟
سؤال عظيم ويحتاجله بحث جبير، الكاتب ما قصر بس المشكلة بالمترجم (محمد الجورا)
ترجمة غير موفقة للاسف قللت هواي من متعة قرائته مع ان الكتاب مكتوب بطريقة ممتعة باللغة الاصلية
I think this book (like the other Pinker books I've read) is fantastic. He is meticulously thorough, and explains complicated concepts and research with as much context as practicable, so that the lay reader doesn't have to just take his word for it. It's ambitious, tackling the large topic of our collective scientific, political, and artistic views about human nature. It's long and engrossing, but definitely worth it. It's a tad dated, but not in any way that takes away from the narrative. He leaves the possibility of lots of future discovery open, and mostly stresses that we need to be ready to take the facts as they are discovered, and not bend them to fit our cultural or political narratives. (It is a bit fun to smile over passing references to sheep cloning, the World Wide Web, and palm pilots).
And I'm not just reading in an echo chamber - at the beginning of the book, I was really resistant to his general thesis. I have often made the logical leap he identifies, where if we accept that the science shows that a trait is heritable or a result of an innate way our brains are wired, that must necessarily translate into policy judgments about what "should be." I have (to my embarrassment) been guilty of the logical misstep of assuming that when a researcher proclaims something is "natural," or at least partially explained by natural phenomena, he must be suggesting that that something is also "good." Pinker carefully deconstructs this problem, and extricates empirical research about what Is from policy judgments about What Should Be.
Don't worry - I'm not so wowed by this book that I automatically agree with him on everything. :) I disagreed with the penultimate chapter about how his findings affect the world of art and artistic expression. He seems to me to be guilty of the same broad brushstrokes he calls out in the other 95% of his book - he points out that we may be evolutionarily primed for art because of our mind's need to carefully appreciate the nuances and depth of the world around us (so we like good landscape paintings) and other people (so we like good portraiture, etc.) But it appears that he sees none of the things that should please our brain in modern art, and instead chalks it up whole-cloth to the fact that a lot of the most avante-garde art is probably just designed to shock, and those who pretend to like it are just doing so as an attempt to grab status as a cultural elite. As a result, we have a glut of "ugly, baffling, and insulting art."
Although I agree that plenty of postmodern art is probably that at bottom, plenty of it is not. Pinker seems to just assume that the Purpose Of Art is to represent the world around us. But that ignores the purposes of expression across language, evocation of certain feelings through color, shape, shadow, and movement (without those colors actually representing or portraying an object or person that we would recognize in the world). And even if postmodern theory is ultimately wrong that there is no objective perspective, that doesn't mean that the attempt to get viewers to see their perspective and realize that it is one is a worthless enterprise. Pinker repeatedly states throughout the books that what makes humans special is the ability to self-consciously think thoughts about our thoughts (about our thoughts, etc.). So even if some thoughts about our thoughts turn out to be empirically the wrong ones, that doesn't make the enterprise pointless. He's right that if a person who is trying to be moral and right wants to hang a clown picture over their couch it's none of our damn business, but it's equally right that if someone else wants to hang a Jackson Pollock above theirs because they find the random, unrepresentative colors beautiful, it's also none of our damn business. He's right that postmodernists don't hold the key to the universe and everyone else is wrong, but that doesn't necessarily mean that their work is always "ugly, baffling, and insulting." (As an aside, he also defines modernism and postmodernism, like Virginia Woolf does, as everything after December 1910. But of course, that was the beginning of a developmental period that over the next 100 years varied significantly. If you think the most over-the-top, shocking, pointless performance art pieces today are stupid, that doesn't necessarily mean you find Matisse equally stupid.)
And I'm not just reading in an echo chamber - at the beginning of the book, I was really resistant to his general thesis. I have often made the logical leap he identifies, where if we accept that the science shows that a trait is heritable or a result of an innate way our brains are wired, that must necessarily translate into policy judgments about what "should be." I have (to my embarrassment) been guilty of the logical misstep of assuming that when a researcher proclaims something is "natural," or at least partially explained by natural phenomena, he must be suggesting that that something is also "good." Pinker carefully deconstructs this problem, and extricates empirical research about what Is from policy judgments about What Should Be.
Don't worry - I'm not so wowed by this book that I automatically agree with him on everything. :) I disagreed with the penultimate chapter about how his findings affect the world of art and artistic expression. He seems to me to be guilty of the same broad brushstrokes he calls out in the other 95% of his book - he points out that we may be evolutionarily primed for art because of our mind's need to carefully appreciate the nuances and depth of the world around us (so we like good landscape paintings) and other people (so we like good portraiture, etc.) But it appears that he sees none of the things that should please our brain in modern art, and instead chalks it up whole-cloth to the fact that a lot of the most avante-garde art is probably just designed to shock, and those who pretend to like it are just doing so as an attempt to grab status as a cultural elite. As a result, we have a glut of "ugly, baffling, and insulting art."
Although I agree that plenty of postmodern art is probably that at bottom, plenty of it is not. Pinker seems to just assume that the Purpose Of Art is to represent the world around us. But that ignores the purposes of expression across language, evocation of certain feelings through color, shape, shadow, and movement (without those colors actually representing or portraying an object or person that we would recognize in the world). And even if postmodern theory is ultimately wrong that there is no objective perspective, that doesn't mean that the attempt to get viewers to see their perspective and realize that it is one is a worthless enterprise. Pinker repeatedly states throughout the books that what makes humans special is the ability to self-consciously think thoughts about our thoughts (about our thoughts, etc.). So even if some thoughts about our thoughts turn out to be empirically the wrong ones, that doesn't make the enterprise pointless. He's right that if a person who is trying to be moral and right wants to hang a clown picture over their couch it's none of our damn business, but it's equally right that if someone else wants to hang a Jackson Pollock above theirs because they find the random, unrepresentative colors beautiful, it's also none of our damn business. He's right that postmodernists don't hold the key to the universe and everyone else is wrong, but that doesn't necessarily mean that their work is always "ugly, baffling, and insulting." (As an aside, he also defines modernism and postmodernism, like Virginia Woolf does, as everything after December 1910. But of course, that was the beginning of a developmental period that over the next 100 years varied significantly. If you think the most over-the-top, shocking, pointless performance art pieces today are stupid, that doesn't necessarily mean you find Matisse equally stupid.)
Some very interesting concepts, and for the most part well-presented. I enjoyed learning about much of the reasoning behind the public's fears of the Blank Slate, and Pinker's rebuttals. I did find, though, that the book dragged at times, and there was a great deal of repetition, so I kept thinking "Get on with it!". Also, while most of the "hot button" topics at the end were interesting, some had a tenuous connection at best. "The Arts"? Really?