The Blank Slate

Steven Pinker mounts a sweeping case against the long-held belief that the human mind is a blank slate shaped entirely by culture and environment, defending instead the reality of human nature as revealed by genetics, evolution, and cognitive science. He traces how this denial has distorted debates about politics, parenting, gender, violence, and the arts, and argues that acknowledging innate human tendencies makes for clearer moral and policy thinking, not worse.

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