the.bricoleur
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making sense of change
 
 
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human conditions - review of Pinker & Gray.. but also more
« on: 2002-12-05 06:56:41 » |
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I was going to put this in the “Are we only such stuff as genes are made?” thread, but thought that Kenan Malik’s website deserved a thread of its own…
Human Conditions : Review essay on ‘The Blank Slate’ by S. Pinker and ‘Straw Dogs’ by John Gray.
The psychologist Geoff Miller has called it a 'paradigm shift': the restoration of human nature into discussions of human behaviour, political policy and social organisation. Where once the idea of human nature was treated with suspicion and ridicule, today there is barely a human activity for which someone does not have an evolutionary account.
A key figure in bringing about this change in the intellectual climate has been the psychologist Steven Pinker. Books such as The Language Instinct and How the Mind Works have established Pinker's reputation both as one of the finest science writers of his generation and as a swashbuckling champion of evolutionary psychology and the computational theory of mind.
Pinker, however, remains unconvinced that there has been an intellectual transformation. Human nature, he insists, remains 'a modern taboo'. It's a taboo 'that distorts our science and scholarship, our public discourse and our day-to-day lives.' In his new book, The Blank Slate, Pinker seeks to restore balance to the discussion of what it is to be human.
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Make sure you check out these links too:
The Science We Like & The Science We Don’t – essay on evolutionary psychology, biotechnology and the deification of nature.
What science can and cannot tell us about human nature
… there are more, like ‘Is the mind a machine?’ and ‘Determining the self’ …
Hope you enjoy!
Bricoleur.
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