- Developmental psychology, Nature and nurture, Sociology, Nonfiction
In The Blank Slate, Steven Pinker, one of the world's leading experts on language and the mind, explores the idea of human nature and its moral, emotional, and political colorings. With characteristic wit, lucidity, and insight, Pinker argues that the dogma that the mind has no innate traits-a doctrine held by many intellectuals during the past century-denies our common humanity and our individual preferences, replaces objective analyses of social problems with feel-good slogans, and distorts our understanding of politics, violence, parenting, and the arts. Injecting calm and rationality into debates that are notorious for ax-grinding and mud-slinging, Pinker shows the importance of an honest acknowledgment of human nature based on science and common sense.
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Character
Spare, cool, contemporary and classical in form.
- sparerichly built
- cooloverwhelming
- contemporarynostalgic
- classical in formformally daring
- earnestironic
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About the book
- Author
- Steven Pinker
- First published
- 2002
- Pages
- 528
- Publisher
- E-Penguin, Viking Press, Penguin Group USA, Inc.
- Editions
- 24
- Language
- heb, Spanish, English
- ISBN
- 9788449314896
Where to read
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On Open Library, 16 have read it and 147 want to.
“"BLANK SLATE" IS a loose translation of the medieval Latin term tabula rasa-literally, "scraped tablet."”
Steven Arthur "Steve" Pinker is a Canadian-born American cognitive scientist, psychologist, linguist, and popular science author. He is Johnstone Family Professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University, and is known for his advocacy of evolutionary psychology and the computational theory of mind.
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