Steven Pinker, Victor Bevine (Read by)

The Blank Slate

The Modern Denial of Human Nature

Select a format:

Retailers:

Apple Books Audible Google Play Hive Kobo Libro.fm Spotify xigxag

Summary

Brought to you by Penguin.

Recently many people have assumed that we are blank slates shaped by our environment. But this denies the heart of our being: human nature. Violence is not just a product of society; male and female minds are different; the genes we give our children shape them more than our parenting practices. To acknowledge our innate abilities, Pinker shows, is not to condone inequality, but to understand the very foundations of humanity.

'A passionate defence of the enduring power of human nature ... both life-affirming and deeply satisfying' Daily Telegraph

'Brilliant ... enjoyable, informative, clear, humane' New Scientist

'Startling ... This is a breath of air for a topic that has been politicized for too long' Economist

©2003 Steven Pinker (P)2019 Penguin Audio

Reviews

A passionate defence of the enduring power of human nature ... both life-affirming and deeply satisfying
Tim Lott, Daily Telegraph, Books of the Year

About the author

Steven Pinker

Steven Pinker is an experimental cognitive scientist. Currently Johnstone Professor of Psychology at Harvard, he has also taught at Stanford and MIT. He has won many prizes for his research, teaching, and his eleven books, including The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, The Blank Slate, The Better Angels of Our Nature, and Enlightenment Now. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, a Humanist of the Year, a recipient of nine honorary doctorates, one of Foreign Policy's 'World's Top 100 Public Intellectuals' and Time's '100 Most Influential People in the World Today'.

Learn More