The blank slate s pinker (penguin, 2002)

{i} >> PENGUIN BOOKS THE BLANK SLATE Steven Pinker is Johnstone Professor of Psychology at Harvard University His research on visual cognition and the psychology of language has earned prizes from the National Academy of Sciences and the American Psychological Association Pinker has also received many awards for his teaching at MIT and for his books How the Mind Works (which was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize) and The Language Instinct He is an elected fellow of several scientific societies, associate editor of Cognition, and a member of the usage panel of the American Heritage Dictionary He has written for The New York Times, Time, The New Yorker, The New Republic, Slate, and Technology Review ~ Praise for The Blank Slate “A brilliant and forceful summary A well-informed and well-written account of [human] limitations, [written with] a graceful interleaving of scientific and literary sources [This] fine book helps with a task that we all must begin to take seriously Can it be that we have finally grown up?” — Melvin Konner, The American Prospect “This is a brilliant book It is beautifully written, and addresses profound issues with courage and clarity There is nothing else like it, and it is going to have an impact that extends well beyond the scientific academy.” — Paul Bloom, Trends in Cognitive Sciences “Steven Pinker has written an extremely good book — clear, well argued, fair, learned, tough, witty, humane, stimulating I only hope that people study it carefully before rising up ideologically against him If they do, they will see that the idea of an innately flawed but wonderfully rich human nature is a force for good, not evil — Colin McGinn, The Washington Post “Steven Pinker is a man of encyclopedic knowledge and an incisive style of argument His argument in The Blank Slate is that intellectual life in the West, and much of our social and political policy, was increasingly dominated through the twentieth century by a view of human nature that is fundamentally flawed; that this domination has been backed by something that amounts to academic terrorism (he does not put it quite so strongly): and that we would benefit {ii} substantially from a more realistic view Pinker's exposition is thoroughly readable and of enviable clarity His explanation of such a difficult technical matter as the analysis of variance and regression in twin studies, for example, would be very hard to better He is not afraid of using strong language in addition, parts of the book are delightfully funny.” — John R G Turner, The Times Literary Supplement “Anyone who has read Pinker's earlier books — including How the Mind Works and The Language Instinct — will rightly guess that his latest effort is similarly sweeping, erudite, sharply argued, richly footnoted and fun to read It's also highly persuasive.” — Michael Lemonick, Time “[Pinker] makes his main argument persuasively and with great verve The Blank Slate ought to be read by anybody who feels they have had enough of nature-nurture rows or who thinks they already know where they stand on the science wars It could change their minds If nothing else, Mr Pinker's book is a wonderfully readable taster of new research, much of it ingenious, designed to show that many more of our emotional biases and mental aptitudes than previously thought are hard-wired or, to use the old word, innate This is a breath of air for a topic that has been politicized for too long.” — The Economist “[Pinker] wades resolutely into the comforting gloom surrounding these not quite forbidden topics and calmly, lucidly marshals the facts to ground his strikingly subversive Darwinian claims — subversive not of any of the things we properly hold dear but subversive of the phony protective layers of misinformation surrounding them My reservations with Pinker's view [will be resolved] in the bright light of rational inquiry that he brings to these important topics.” — Dan Dennett, The Times Literary Supplement “The Blank Slate brilliantly delineates the current state of play in the nature-nurture debate Read it to understand not just the moral and aesthetic blindness of your friends, but the misguided idealism of nations A magnificent and timely work.” — Fay Weldon, The Daily Telegraph “[Pinker] points us in the direction of a more productive debate, a debate in which the implications of science are confronted forthrightly and not simply wished away by politicized scientists.” — Francis Fukuyama, The Wall Street Journal {iii} “The Blank Slate is a stylish piece of work I won't say it is better than The Language Instinct or How the Mind Works, but it is as good — which is very high praise indeed What a superb thinker and writer he is: what a role model to young scientists And how courageous to buck the liberal trend in science, while remaining in person the best sort of liberal Pinker is a star, and the world of science is lucky to have him.” — Richard Dawkins, The Times Literary Supplement “The Blank Slate is not dismal at all, but unexpectedly bracing It feels a bit like being burgled You're shocked, your things are gone, but you can't help thinking about how you're going to replace them What Steven Pinker has done is break into our common human home and steal our illusions.” — John Morrish, The Independent “As a brightly lighted path between what we would like to believe and what we need to know, [The Blank Slate] is required reading Pinker presents an unanswerable case for accepting that man can be, as he is, both wired and free.” — Frederic Raphael, Los Angeles Times “Pinker's thinking and writing are first-rate; maybe even better than that The Blank Slate is much-needed, long overdue and — if you are interested in what might be called the ‘human nature wars’ — somewhere between that old standby, ‘required reading,’ and downright indispensable It is unlikely to change the minds of those who are rigidly committed to the blank slate perspective, but for anyone whose ‘nature’ includes even a modicum of openmindedness, it should prove a revelation.” — David Barash, Human Nature Review “Pinker is one of those rare writers who is at once persuasive and comprehensive, informative and entertaining.” — Kevin Shapiro, Commentary “The fight for a separation of politics from science is an eminently sensible, logical, and ultimately humanistic task, and it took someone as brave as Pinker to dedicate himself to it [This is a] necessary book, a book that in a more truthful intellectual climate — one open to the idea that any knowledge about ourselves can only enhance our ability to act well and compassionately — would not have had to be written In this climate, however, we should be grateful that it was.” — Daniel Smith, The Boston Globe {iv} “The Blank Slate deserves to be read carefully and with an open mind This landmark book makes an important contribution to the argument about nature vs nurture in humans Whether or not most readers end up on Pinker's side of the fence, one can hope that his thoroughness and reasoning will shed light into the darker corners where research has been suppressed by taboos, and where freedom of thought and speech have been inhibited by fear of consequences for asking forbidden questions.” — Nancy Jeannette Friedlander, The San Diego Union-Tribune “This book is a modern magnum opus The scholarship alone is mind-boggling, a monument of careful research, meticulous citation, breadth of input from diverse fields, great writing and humor.” — Tom Paskal, The Montreal Gazette “A delightfully provocative read A constantly dynamic, if tacit, exchange between the author and his readers.” — Patrick Watson, The Globe and Mail “A feast of a book Pinker's analytical and impish mind ranges from Charles Darwin to Abigail Van Buren, from scientific studies to Annie Hall It will be a rare reader who agrees with everything in this book But it is an intelligent book that says what it means and thinks about what it is saying Though much of the book is about human differences, the bigger idea is inherited similarity — the ‘psychological unity of our species.’ It is not a blank slate but a slate with a face — a face that might be called human nature When Pinker starts describing it, the reader will surely recognize it.” — Bruce Ramsey, The Seattle Times {v} THE BLANK SLATE The Modern Denial of Human Nature Steven Pinker PENGUIN BOOKS > To Don, Judy, Leda, and John PENGUIN BOOKS Published by the Penguin Group Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R ORL, England Penguin Books Australia Ltd, 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2 Penguin Books India (P) Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi - 110 017, India Penguin Books (N.Z.) Ltd, Cnr Rosedale and Airborne Roads, Albany, Auckland, New Zealand Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R ORL, England First published in the United States of America by Viking Penguin, a member of Penguin Putnam Inc 2002 Published in Penguin Books 2003 10 Copyright © Steven Pinker, 2002 All rights reserved Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint the following copyrighted material Page 22: Lyrics from “A Simple Desultory Philippic (or How I Was Robert McNamara'd into Submission)”; copyright © 1965, Paul Simon; used by permission of the publisher: Paul Simon Music Page 57: Chart, “Percentage of Male Deaths Caused by Warfare,” from War Before Civilization by Lawrence H Keeley, copyright © 1996 by Oxford University Press, Inc.; used by permission of Oxford University Press, Inc Page 88: Diagram of the wiring of the primate visual system from Michael Gazzaniga, The Cognitive Neurosciences, The MIT Press (1996) Page 179: Lyrics from “Gee, Officer Krupke” by Leonard Bernstein & Stephen Sondheim; © 1956, Amberson Holdings LLC and Stephen Sondheim; copyright renewed; Leonard Bernstein Music Publishing Company LLC, publisher; used by permission Page 199: Diagram, “Turning the Tables,” from Mind Sights by Roger N Shepard, © 1990 by Roger N Shepard; reprinted by permission of Henry Holt and Company, LLC “Checker Shadow Illusion” © Edward Adelson, 2002; reprinted with permission Page 326: Lyrics from “You Don't Mess Around with Jim,” written by Jim Croce; © 1972 (renewed), Time in a Bottle/Croce Publishing (ASCAP); all rights reserved; used by permission THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATALOGUED THE HARDCOVER EDITION AS FOLLOWS: Pinker, Steven, 1954The blank slate : the modern denial of human nature / Steven Pinker p cm Includes bibliographical references (p.) and index ISBN 0-670-03151-8 (hc.) ISBN 14 20.0334 (pbk.) Nature and nurture I Title BF341.P47 2002 155.2'34 — dc21 2002022719 Printed in the United States of America Set in Minion Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials Your support of the author's rights is appreciated > PREFACE “Not another book on nature and nurture! Are there really people out there who still believe that the mind is a blank slate? Isn't it obvious to anyone with more than one child, to anyone who has been in a heterosexual relationship, or to anyone who has noticed that children learn language but house pets don't, that people are born with certain talents and temperaments? Haven't we all moved beyond the simplistic dichotomy between heredity and environment and realized that all behavior comes out of an interaction between the two?” This is the kind of reaction I got from colleagues when I explained my plans for this book At first glance the reaction is not unreasonable Maybe nature versus nurture is a dead issue Anyone familiar with current writings on mind and behavior has seen claims to the middle ground like these: If the reader is now convinced that either the genetic or environmental explanation has won out to the exclusion of the other, we have not done a sufficiently good job of presenting one side or the other It seems highly likely to us that both genes and environment have something to with this issue What might the mix be? We are resolutely agnostic on that issue; as far as we can determine, the evidence does not yet justify an estimate This is not going to be one of those books that says everything is genetic: it isn't The environment is just as important as the genes The things children experience while they are growing up are just as important as the things they are born with Even when a behavior is heritable, an individual's behavior is still a product of development, and thus it has a causal environmental component The modern understanding of how phenotypes are inherited through the replication of both genetic and environmental {viii} conditions suggests that cultural traditions — behaviors copied by children from their parents — are likely to be crucial If you think these are innocuous compromises that show that everyone has outgrown the nature-nurture debate, think again The quotations come, in fact, from three of the most incendiary books of the last decade The first is from The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, who argue that the difference in average IQ scores between American blacks and American whites has both genetic and environmental causes.1 The second is from The Nurture Assumption by Judith Rich Harris, who argues that children's personalities are shaped by their genes as well as by their environments, so similarities between children and their parents may come from their shared genes and not just from the effects of parenting.2 The third is from A Natural History of Rape by Randy Thornhill and Craig Palmer, who argue that rape is not simply a product of culture but also has roots in the nature of men's sexuality.3 For invoking nurture and nature, not nurture alone, these authors have been picketed, shouted down, subjected to searing invective in the press, even denounced in Congress Others expressing such opinions have been censored, assaulted, or threatened with criminal prosecution.4 The idea that nature and nurture interact to shape some part of the mind might turn out to be wrong, but it is not wishy-washy or unexceptionable, even in the twenty-first century, thousands of years after the issue was framed When it comes to explaining human thought and behavior, the possibility that heredity plays any role at all still has the power to shock To acknowledge human nature, many think, is to endorse racism, sexism, war, greed, genocide, nihilism, reactionary politics, and neglect of children and the disadvantaged Any claim that the mind has an innate organization strikes people not as a hypothesis that might be incorrect but as a thought it is immoral to think This book is about the moral, emotional, and political colorings of the concept of human nature in modern life I will retrace the history that led people to see human nature as a dangerous idea, and I will try to unsnarl the moral and political rat's nests that have entangled the idea along the way Though no book on human nature can hope to be uncontroversial, I did not write it to be yet another “explosive” book, as dust jackets tend to say I am not, as many people assume, countering an extreme “nurture” position with an extreme “nature” position, with the truth lying somewhere in between In some cases, an extreme environmentalist explanation is correct: which language you speak is an obvious example, and differences among races and ethnic groups in test scores may be another In other cases, such as certain inherited neurological disorders, an extreme hereditarian explanation is correct In most cases the correct explanation will invoke a complex interaction between heredity and environment: culture is crucial, but culture could not exist without mental {ix} faculties that allow humans to create and learn culture to begin with My goal in this book is not to argue that genes are everything and culture is nothing — no one believes that — but to explore why the extreme position (that culture is everything) is so often seen as moderate, and the moderate position is seen as extreme Nor does acknowledging human nature have the political implications so many fear It does not, for example, require one to abandon feminism, or to accept current levels of inequality or violence, or to treat morality as a fiction For the most part I will try not to advocate particular policies or to advance the agenda of the political left or right I believe that controversies about policy almost always involve tradeoffs between competing values, and that science is equipped to identify the tradeoffs but not to resolve them Many of these tradeoffs, I will show, arise from features of human nature, and by clarifying them I hope to make our collective choices, whatever they are, better informed If I am an advocate, it is for discoveries about human nature that have been ignored or suppressed in modern discussions of human affairs Why is it important to sort this all out? The refusal to acknowledge human nature is like the Victorians’ embarrassment about sex, only worse: it distorts our science and scholarship, our public discourse, and our day-today lives Logicians tell us that a single contradiction can corrupt a set of statements and allow falsehoods to proliferate through it The dogma that human nature does not exist, in the face of evidence from science and common sense that it does, is just such a corrupting influence First, the doctrine that the mind is a blank slate has distorted the study of human beings, and thus the public and private decisions that are guided by that research Many policies on parenting, for example, are inspired by research that finds a correlation between the behavior of parents and the behavior of children Loving parents have confident children, authoritative parents (neither too permissive nor too punitive) have well-behaved children, parents who talk to their children have children with better language skills, and so on Everyone concludes that to grow the best children, parents must be loving, authoritative, and talkative, and if children don't turn out well it must be the parents’ fault But the conclusions depend on the belief that children are blank slates Parents, remember, provide their children with genes, not just a home environment The correlations between parents and children may be telling us only that the same genes that make adults loving, authoritative, and talkative make their children self-confident, wellbehaved, and articulate Until the studies are redone with adopted children (who get only their environment, not their genes, from their parents), the data are compatible with the possibility that genes make all the difference, the possibility that parenting makes all the difference, or anything in between Yet in almost every instance, the most extreme position — that parents are everything — is the only one researchers entertain {x} The taboo on human nature has not just put blinkers on researchers but turned any discussion of it into a heresy that must be stamped out Many writers are so desperate to discredit any suggestion of an innate human constitution that they have thrown logic and civility out the window Elementary distinctions — “some” versus “all,” “probable” versus “always,” “is” versus “ought” — are eagerly flouted to paint human nature as an extremist doctrine and thereby steer readers away from it The analysis of ideas is commonly replaced by political smears and personal attacks This poisoning of the intellectual atmosphere has left us unequipped to analyze pressing issues about human nature just as new scientific discoveries are making them acute The denial of human nature has spread beyond the academy and has led to a disconnect between intellectual life and common sense I first had the idea of writing this book when I started a collection of astonishing claims from pundits and social critics about the malleability of the human psyche: that little boys quarrel and fight because they are encouraged to so; that children enjoy sweets because their parents use them as a reward for eating vegetables; that teenagers get the idea to compete in looks and fashion from spelling bees and academic prizes; that men think the goal of sex is an orgasm because of the way they were socialized The problem is not just that these claims are preposterous but that the writers did not acknowledge they were saying things that common sense might call into question This is the mentality of a cult, in which fantastical beliefs are flaunted as proof of one's piety That mentality cannot coexist with an esteem for the truth, and I believe it is responsible for some of the unfortunate trends in recent intellectual life One trend is a stated contempt among many scholars for the concepts of truth, logic, and evidence Another is a hypocritical divide between what intellectuals say in public and what they really believe A third is the inevitable reaction: a culture of “politically incorrect” shock jocks who revel in anti-intellectualism and bigotry, emboldened by the knowledge that the intellectual establishment has forfeited claims to credibility in the eyes of the public Finally, the denial of human nature has not just corrupted the world of critics and intellectuals but has done harm to the lives of real people The theory that parents can mold their children like clay has inflicted childrearing regimes on parents that are unnatural and sometimes cruel It has distorted the choices faced by mothers as they try to balance their lives, and multiplied the anguish of parents whose children haven't turned out the way they hoped The belief that human tastes are reversible cultural preferences has led social planners to write off people's enjoyment of ornament, natural light, and human scale and force millions of people to live in drab cement boxes The romantic notion that all evil is a product of society has justified the release of dangerous psychopaths who promptly murdered innocent people And the conviction {xi} that humanity could be reshaped by massive social engineering projects led to some of the greatest atrocities in history Though many of my arguments will be coolly analytical — that an acknowledgment of human nature does not, logically speaking, imply the negative outcomes so many people fear — I will not try to hide my belief that they have a positive thrust as well “Man will become better when you show him what he is like,” wrote Chekhov, and so the new sciences of human nature can help lead the way to a realistic, biologically informed humanism They expose the psychological unity of our species beneath the superficial differences of physical appearance and parochial culture They make us appreciate the wondrous complexity of the human mind, which we are apt to take for granted precisely because it works so well They identify the moral intuitions that we can put to work in improving our lot They promise a naturalness in human relationships, encouraging us to treat people in terms of how they feel rather than how some theory says they ought to feel They offer a touchstone by which we can identify suffering and oppression wherever they occur, unmasking the rationalizations of the powerful They give us a way to see through the designs of self-appointed social reformers who would liberate us from our pleasures They renew our appreciation for the achievements of democracy and of the rule of law And they enhance the insights of artists and philosophers who have reflected on the human condition for millennia An honest discussion of human nature has never been more timely Throughout the twentieth century, many intellectuals tried to rest principles of decency on fragile factual claims such as that human beings are biologically indistinguishable, harbor no ignoble motives, and are utterly free in their ability to make choices These claims are now being called into question by discoveries in the sciences of mind, brain, genes, and evolution If nothing else, the completion of the Human Genome Project, with its promise of an unprecedented understanding of the genetic roots of the intellect and the emotions, should serve as a wake-up call The new scientific challenge to the denial of human nature leaves us with a challenge If we are not to abandon values such as peace and equality, or our commitments to science and truth, then we must pry these values away from claims about our psychological makeup that are vulnerable to being proven false This book is for people who wonder where the taboo against human nature came from and who are willing to explore whether the challenges to the taboo are truly dangerous or just unfamiliar It is for those who are curious about the emerging portrait of our species and curious about the legitimate criticisms of that portrait It is for those who suspect that the taboo against human nature has left us playing without a full deck as we deal with the pressing issues confronting us And it is for those who recognize that the sciences of {xii} mind, brain, genes, and evolution are permanently changing our view of ourselves and wonder whether the values we hold precious will wither, survive, or (as I argue) be enhanced ~ It is a pleasure to acknowledge the friends and colleagues who improved this book in innumerable ways Helena Cronin, Judith Rich Harris, Geoffrey Miller, Orlando Patterson, and Donald Symons offered deep and insightful analyses of every aspect, and I can only hope that the final version is worthy of their wisdom I profited as well from invaluable comments by Ned Block, David Buss, Nazli Choucri, Leda Cosmides, Denis Dutton, Michael Gazzaniga, David Geary, George Graham, Paul Gross, Marc Hauser, Owen Jones, David Kemmerer, David Lykken, Gary Marcus, Roslyn Pinker, Robert Plomin, James Rachels, Thomas Sowell, John Tooby, Margo Wilson, and William Zimmerman My thanks also go to the colleagues who reviewed chapters in their areas of expertise: Josh Cohen, Richard Dawkins, Ronald Green, Nancy Kanwisher, Lawrence Katz, Glenn Loury, Pauline Maier, Anita Patterson, Mriganka Sur, and Milton J Wilkinson I thank many others who graciously responded to requests for information or offered suggestions that found their way into the book: Mahzarin Banaji, Chris Bertram, Howard Bloom, Thomas Bouchard, Brian Boyd, Donald Brown, Jennifer Campbell, Rebecca Cann, Susan Carey, Napoleon Chagnon, Martin Daly, Irven DeVore, Dave Evans, Jonathan Freedman, Jennifer Ganger, Howard Gardner, Tamar Gendler, Adam Gopnik, Ed Hagen, David Housman, Tony Ingram, William Irons, Christopher Jencks, Henry Jenkins, Jim Johnson, Erica Jong, Douglas Kenrick, Samuel Jay Keyser, Stephen Kosslyn, Robert Kurzban, George Lakoff, Eric Lander, Loren Lomasky, Martha Nussbaum, Mary Parlee, Larry Squire, Wendy Steiner, Randy Thornhill, James Watson, Torsten Wiesel, and Robert Wright The themes of this book were first presented at forums whose hosts and audiences provided vital feedback They include the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania; the Cognition, Brain, and Art Symposium at the Getty Research Institute; the Developmental Behavior Genetics conference at the University of Pittsburgh; the Human Behavior and Evolution Society; the Humane Leadership Project at the University of Pennsylvania; the Institute on Race and Social Division at Boston University; the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences at MIT; the Neurosciences Research Program at the Neurosciences Institute; the Positive Psychology Summit; the Society for Evolutionary Analysis in Law; and the Tanner Lectures on Human Values at Yale University I am happy to acknowledge the superb environment for teaching and inquiry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the support of Mriganka Sur, head of the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Robert {xiii} Silbey, dean of the School of Science, Charles Vest, president of MIT, and many colleagues and students John Bearley, the librarian of the Teuber Library, tracked down scholarly materials and answers to questions no matter how obscure I also gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the MIT Mac Vicar Faculty Fellows program and the Peter de Florez chair My research on language is supported by NIH Grant HD18381 Wendy Wolf at Viking Penguin and Stefan McGrath at Penguin Books provided excellent advice and welcome good cheer I thank them and my agents, John Brockman and Katinka Matson, for their efforts on behalf of the book I am delighted that Katya Rice agreed to copy-edit this book, our fifth collaboration My heartfelt appreciation goes to my family, the Pinkers, Boodmans, and Subbiah-Adamses, for their love and support Special thanks to my wife, Ilavenil Subbiah, for her wise advice and loving encouragement This book is dedicated to four people who have been dear friends and profound influences: Donald Symons, Judith Rich Harris, Leda Cosmides, and John Tooby > {xv} CONTENTS PREFACE PART I The Blank Slate, the Noble Savage, and the Ghost in the Machine Chapter The Official Theory vii Chapter Silly Putty 14 Chapter The Last Wall to Fall 30 Chapter Culture Vultures 59 Chapter The Slate's Last Stand 73 PART II Fear and Loathing 103 Chapter Political Scientists 105 Chapter The Holy Trinity 121 PART III Human Nature with a Human Face 137 Chapter The Fear of Inequality 141 Chapter The Fear of Imperfectibility 159 Chapter 10 The Fear of Determinism 174 Chapter 11 The Fear of Nihilism 186 PART IV Know Thyself 195 Chapter 12 In Touch with Reality 197 Chapter 13 Out of Our Depths 219 Chapter 14 The Many Roots of Our Suffering 241 Chapter 15 The Sanctimonious Animal 269 PART V Hot Buttons 281 Chapter 16 Politics 283 Chapter 17 Violence 306 Chapter 18 Gender 337 Chapter 19 Children 372 Chapter 20 The Arts 400 PART VI The Voice of the Species 421 Appendix: Donald E Brown's List of Human Universals 435 > THE BLANK SLATE Rawls, John, 150–51 Reagan, Ronald, 287 Real Boys (Pollack), 309 realism, naïve, 199 recursion, 36–37, 79–81, 236, 336 Redmond, Elsa, 118 reductionism, 10, 69–72, 112, 113–14, 118, 126–27 relativism, 23, 172, 198–201, 202, 208, 213–14, 272–73, 411, 426–27 language and, 207–11 see also postmodernism religion, 94, 128–33, 137, 154, 166, 175, 182, 186–90, 224–28, 240, 246, 247, 257, 263, 286, 287, 288 human nature and, 1–2 morality and, 138, 182, 186–90 religiosity, 375 religious right, 128–33, 163–64, 175, 250, 286, 287 Republic (Plato), 285 responsibility, 131–33, 166, 174–85 retaliation, law of, 324–25 see also revenge Rethinking Innateness (Bates and Elman), 34–35, 84 Return of Beauty, 417 revenge, 53, 54, 180–82, 322–29, 428–31 Rhodes, Richard, 308–9 Rice, Marnie, 263, 342 Richards, Robert, 154 Ridley, Matt, 256 risk, 231–33 Roback, Jennifer, 353, 357 robots, 61 see also artificial intelligence Rockefeller, John D., 16 Rockwell, Norman, 402 Roiphe, Katie, 343 Roman Catholic Church, 186–87, 225 romanticism, 10, 154, 159–65, 255, 263, 264, 300–301, 331, 413 see also naturalistic fallacy; Noble Savage Romer, Paul, 237 Roosevelt, Theodore, 153 Rorty, Richard, 202 Rose, Hilary, 255, 366 Rose, Steven, 111, 112, 113–14, 115, 122–23, 124, 126, 127, 133, 255, 377–78 Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (Stoppard), 317 Rossi, Alice, 342 Rousseau, Jean–Jacques, 6–8, 11, 12, 56, 159, 193, 285, 287, 288, 296, 301 Rowe, David, 381 Rozin, Paul, 230–31, 272, 275 Rumelhart, David, 21, 35, 74 Rummel, R J., 332 Russell, Bertrand, 2, 26, 270 Russian Revolution, 295 Ryle, Gilbert, 9–10, 126 Sahlins, Marshall, 108–9, 135 St Helena, 311 Salmon, Catherine, 342 Samoans, 56 Sanger, Margaret, 153 Sapir, Edward, 207–8 Sargent, John Singer, 160 Sarich, Vincent, 144 Sartre, Jean–Paul, 180 Satel, Sally, 342, 370 Saturday Night Live, 343 Saving Private Ryan, 160 Scandinavia, 16, 47, 71, 315 Scarr, Sandra, 381 Scarry, Elaine, 417 Schelling, Thomas, 322 schizophrenia, 45–46, 215 Schlesinger, Laura, 164 Schwartz, Felice, 353 Schwarzenegger, Arnold, 226 science studies, 198 Scopes Monkey Trial, 130 Scott, Dred, 292 Scott, James, 170 Searle, John, 65, 327–28 Segal, Nancy, 47 Sejnowski, Terrence, 84 self, unified, 42–43 {506} self–deception, 111, 128, 260–66, 280, 290, 293, 294, 295, 301, 324, 325, 330, 336, 423–29 Selfish Gene, The (Dawkins), 112, 124, 241, 242 selfishness, 50, 52, 161–62, 163, 169–70, 190–91, 242–45, 246–47, 255–63 Sen, Amartya, 237, 272 Serrano, Andres, 414 Seville Statement, 307–8 sex differences, 142, 144–45, 171–72, 178–79, 205, 251–54, 337–71, 422, 433 in brain, 347 discomfort about, 351 gender gap and, 351–61 in parenting, 252–54, 350 in violence, 309–11, 316–17 women as researchers on, 342 sex discrimination, 16–17, 145, 148, 149, 202, 205, 273, 337–39, 341, 351, 354, 355, 357 sexual assault, see rape sexual behavior, 20, 54, 56, 60, 89, 112, 132, 148, 160, 178–79, 211, 236, 252–54, 267–68, 271, 273, 276, 338, 344, 348, 356, 360– 63, 367–68, 370–71 sexual competition, 319, 346, 347 arts and, 407–8 sexual orientation, 44, 46, 93–94, 154, 164, 201–2 Shakespeare, William, 197, 224, 418 Shalit, Wendy, 339 Shastri, Lokendra, 80 Shatz, Carla, 91–92 Shaw, George Bernard, 153, 181, 287–88, 423 Shaywitz, Sally, 342 Shepard, Roger, 199, 200, 405 Sherman, Cindy, 411 Shockley, William, 153 Shosha (Singer), 251 Shweder, Richard, 26, 272 sibling conflict, 248–250, 266–70, 389–90 sickle cell anemia, 144 sign language, 95–96, 391 Silk, Joan, 342 Silver, Ron, 432 Simon, Herbert, 105, 302 Simon, Julian, 237 Simon, Paul, 22 Singer, Isaac Bashevis, 251, 431–34 Singer, Peter, 166–67, 298, 320 Skinner, B E, 20, 169, 177, 207, 246 slavery, 6, 15, 109, 144, 145, 155, 156, 292, 298, 329, 338 Slavs, 154 Sledgehammer, 403 slippery slopes, 228–29 Slovic, Paul, 231, 302 Small, Meredith, 342 smell (olfactory) system, 93 Smith, Adam, 161, 233, 285, 287, 288, 290, 302 Smith, Edgar, 262 Smith, John Maynard, 108, 167, 284 Smith, Susan, 189 smoking, 275, 373, 391, 393 Smolensky, Paul, 80 Smothers Brothers, 250 Smuts, Barbara, 342 Sober, Elliot, 259 social constructionism, 6, 17, 22–29, 31, 38, 40, 134, 198, 327, 341, 393 social contract, 8, 150–51, 193, 285–86, 296, 330 Social Contract, The (Rousseau), Social Darwinism, 16, 103, 109, 134, 141, 149, 150, 152, 157, 162, 425 Hitler's belief in, 153, 157 social engineering, 158, 169–73 socialism, 257 see also Marxism socialization, personality vs., 395 social psychology, see psychology, social social reality, 64–65, 327 social sciences, sociobiology, 6, 17, 22–29, 31, 53, 60, 67, 109, 124, 135, 201, 207, 249, 284–85, 301, 307–8, 342, 354, 419 {507} Sociobiology (Wilson), 108–11, 115, 124, 284, 285 sociology, 23, 27, 284–85, 286 Socrates, 23 Sokal, Alan, 410 Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr, 157 Sommers, Christina Hoff, 172, 341, 342 Sontag, Susan, 343 soul, 8–9, 10, 28–29, 31, 133, 186–87, 224–27, 243, 293 see also Ghost in the Machine South Africa, 321 Southerners, 328, 428–31 Soviet Union, 152, 155, 158, 246, 286–87, 310, 331, 334, 410 Sowell, Thomas, 287, 295 Spanish Civil War, 321 spatial sense, 220 Specter, Arlen, 312 speech–recognition software, 106 Spencer, Herbert, 15–16, 150 Sperber, Dan, 65 Sperry, Roger, 43 Spock, Benjamin, 20 Sponsel, Leslie, 115–19 sports, 317 Springsteen, Bruce, 179 Stalin, Joseph, 152, 158, 295 Standard Social Science Model, 67, 69 see also social constructionism; social sciences Stardust Memories, 49 statistics, 231–32 status, 21, 39, 52, 65, 106–7, 110, 128, 217, 223, 250, 273–74, 293, 302–5, 319, 326–29, 345, 355, 356, 358, 386, 390, 405, 406–8, 416 Stein, Gertrude, 417–18 Steinem, Gloria, 171, 343, 353 Steiner, George, 266, 415, 431 Steiner, Wendy, 417 stem cell research, 12, 224, 226 Stephen, James, 182 stepparenting, 164–65 stereotypes, 201–7 Stevens, Wallace, 236 Stich, Stephen, 38 Stills, Stephen, 253 Sting, 253 Stockhausen, Karlheinz, 416 Stoicism, 193 Stolba, Christine, 353 Stoppard, Tom, 317, 321–22 Storey, Robert, 417, 420 strict constructionism, 291 Strossen, Nadine, 342 Sullivan, Andrew, 348 Sullivan, Arthur, 283 Sulloway, Frank, 381, 389 Summerhill (Neill), 222 Superfund Act (1980), 278 superorganism (group mind), 26, 108, 158, 172, 244, 255, 284, 296, 309, 427 supervisory attention system, 40 Supreme Court, U.S., 129, 291 Sur, Mriganka, 85, 95 Switzerland, 311 symbiosis 242 Symons, Donald, 114–15, 252, 267–68, 272–73 Szathmary, Eors, 167 Take Our Daughters to Work Day, 339, 352 Taliban, 254 Tasmania, 69 Taylor, Joan Kennedy, 342 Tay–Sachs, 144 technology, 68–69, 221, 237–39, 338 Tennyson, Alfred, Lord, 242 testosterone, 316, 328, 347–48 see also androgens Tetlock, Philip, 277, 278 thalamus, 44, 87, 92, 95–96, 98 Thaler, Richard, 302 Thatcher, Margaret, 286, 287, 293 theory of mind, 61–63, 220, 223–24, 228 art and, 412, 417 chimpanzees and, 61–62 culture learning and, 61–63 Theory of Moral Sentiments, The (Smith), 288 {508} Thomas, Elizabeth Marshall, 56 Thornhill, Nancy Wilmsen, 342 Thornhill, Randy, viii, 161, 176, 359–69 thought, language and, 207–11 “Thousand and One Nights, The, “ 419 Thucydides, 322 Tierney, Patrick, 115–19 Tiger, Lionel, 111 Tilghman, Shirley, 358 Tinbergen, Niko, 70 tobacco industry, 275, 393 Todorov, Tzvetan, 134 Tolstoy, Leo, 247–48 Tooby, John, 134, 233–34, 238, 365 toolmaking, 220, 238, 323 Tootsie, 403 totalitarianism, 152, 155, 158, 169–70, 296, 425–28 trade, 167–69, 233–36, 255–56, 290–91, 297, 320 Traffic, 276 Tragic Vision, 287–305 traits: emergenic, 152–53 heritability of, 45–47, 49–51, 373–78 Machiavellian, 259–60 Trivers, Robert, 108, 111, 241, 244, 248, 251–52, 263–64, 266, 271, 301, 319, 343, 389 Trudeau, Pierre, 286 Truman, Harry S., 175 Tuchman, Barbara, 324 Turkheimer, Eric, 372, 379 Turner, Frederick, 410–11, 417 Turner, Mark, 417 Turner, Terence, 115–19 Turner's syndrome, 349 Tversky, Amos, 302 Twain, Mark, 428–31 twin studies, 46–48, 98, 102, 142, 146, 374–77, 378–79, 396, 397 2001: A Space Odyssey, 337 Ultimatum game, 256 United Nations, 27, 307, 308, 360 United States, 2, 16, 57, 144, 153, 205, 257, 306, 307, 311, 330, 333, 334, 338 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 167 Universal Grammar, 37–38, 55 Universal People, 55 universals, human, 37–38, 55, 435–39 see also specific topics Updike, John, 431 urban renewal, 170–71 usury, 235 utopianism, 169–70 Utopian Vision, 287–305 Valian, Virginia, 206 Vanatinai, 339 van Buren, Abigail, 47 van Gogh, Vincent, 407, 409–10 Vasquez, John, 323–24 Veblen, Thorstein, 406, 407, 414 vegetarianism, 227–28, 275, 320 Venter, Craig, 75–76 Verbal Behavior (Skinner), 207 Vietnam War, 160, 298, 326 violence, 44, 56–58, 294, 306–36 fear and, 322–26 feuds and, 430–31 honor and, 326–29 morality and, 318–22 prevention of, 330–32 as public health problem, 312 Violence Initiative, 314 visual illusions, 199–201 visual system, 51–52, 87–97, 99, 199–201, 214–15 arts and, 405, 412, 417–18 Vonnegut, Kurt, 424–25 Waddington, C H., 109 Wald, George, 153 Walker, Rebecca, 343 Wallace, Alfred Russel, 28, 42 War Against Boys, The (Sommers), 172 Ward, Elizabeth, 383 warfare, 125, 160, 306–7, 321, 322, 324, 326, 333–36 {509} Warhol, Andy, 411 Warren, Earl, 181, 288, 291 Watson, John B., 19, 20, 24, 30, 77, 123–24, 207 Wealth of Nations, The (Smith), 233 Webb, Beatrice, 153, 301 Webb, Sidney, 153, 301 Weber, Max, 284 Weizenbaum, Joseph, 105–6, 279 welfare, 290, 304 Wells, H.G., 153 Wertheim, Margaret, 366, 393 West, John, 129 West Side Story, 179 White, Leslie, 25, 26 Whitney Museum, 217, 411, 417 Who, The, 209, 295 Whole Language, 222 Whorf, Benjamin, 207–8 Who Stole Feminism (Sommers), 341 “Who Will Bell the Cat?” (Aesop), 256 Wiesel, Torsten, 97, 108 Wilkinson, Milton J., 335–36 Wilkinson, Richard, 304 Williams, George, 108, 163, 244, 255, 258 Wilson, David Sloan, 259 Wilson, E O., 30, 108–12, 113, 114, 124, 132, 134, 284, 285, 293, 296, 405 Wilson, Margo, 164–65, 182, 254, 304, 313, 319, 325, 327, 342 Wilson, Woodrow, 201 “Wisdom of Repugnance, The” (Kass), 274 Witelson, Sandra, 342 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 207 Wohler, Friedrich, 30 Wolfe, Tom, 131–33, 407, 414 women: biblical view of, interests of, 172, 337–38, 357–59, 361, 363, 365, 370–71 Taliban and, 254 U.S Constitution and, 298 see also feminism; sex differences Wooldridge, Adrian, 301, 302 Woolf, Virginia, 404, 409, 413 Words and Rules (Pinker), 81 Wordsworth, William, 159, 170, 295, 373 World War I, 160, 201, 323, 324, 334, 335 World War II, 27, 37, 57, 153, 155, 205, 235, 322, 333, 334 World Wide Web, 71, 402 Wrangham, Richard, 324 Wright, Robert, 133–34, 167, 168, 245, 320 Yanomamö, 115–19, 314, 323, 334, 431 Yeats, William Butler, 167 Young, Cathy, 342, 353, 360 Yugoslavia, 331 Zahavi, Amotz, 406 Zimbardo, Philip, 321 Zing Yang Kuo, 20 Zippy, 351 > FOR THE BEST IN PAPERBACKS, LOOK FOR THE In every corner of the world, on every subject under the sun, Penguin represents quality and variety — the very best in publishing today For complete information about books available from Penguin — including Penguin Classics, Penguin Compass, and Puffins 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pointers, lists, files, trees, arrays, loops, propositions, and networks For example, cognitive psychologists are studying the graphics system in the head