Haribol Acharya
Why do we study? The answer would be: For a variety of reasons and one reason among many others is we study to better understand ourselves, our natures and the world we live in.
The age old discussion is between Nature and Nurture. A school of thought argued that human nature or human intelligence comes from environment and culture, and man at birth is in a blank slate and does not know anything, totally ‘unknowledgeable’ of the world around him, and through environment, that is through perceptions, discernments he garners knowledge in his brains and at the same time he learns from cultures, i.e., from his parents, siblings, teachers, peers, books etc.
Steven Pinker quotes from John Watson’s Behaviourism that reads “Give me a dozen healthy infants, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I’ll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select a doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant–chief, and [,] yes, even beggar-man and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors.”
Pinker sounds like people’s future is written in their stars, or saying that something is predetermined. He simply drowns a popular and overwhelming idea in the early twentieth century that posits that men were in blank states when they were born, and how they behave in the course of their lives come from interactions with the environment, primarily via conditioning.
Let me introduce Steven Pinker before diving into what he has to say in this book. He is a prominent cognitive psychologist, linguist, and popular science author. A professor at Harvard University he is widely recognized for making complex scientific ideas accessible to the public.
The Blank State: The Modern Denial of Human Nature is a seminal book, the mapping of human nature against the illusion that man at birth is totally in a blank state and all he is, or his patterns’ behaviour is acquired in his later life from the environment he grows or bought up. He is initially in a wild state and is tamed in society through cultures and educations etc. But Pinker challenges this notion or understanding about human nature and behaviour ruthlessly. He dismantles the scaffolding of the beliefs prevailing in the twentieth century. He writes with clarity and precision that befits a surgeon. He draws on the findings of various sources from genetics, neuroscience, psychology, evolutionary biology etc. And in addition he refers to a plethora of genres like science, logic, philosophical critique and even anthropology. At the same time he quotes Noam Chomsky who advocated that language –learning is universal.
Interesting, isn’t it? Man inherits certain characters from his parents, mainly psychological traits, and they are again shaped by evolution. In fact these traits are encoded in our genes. These traits exert influences on humans’ tendencies, abilities, patterns of thinking, and feelings etc.
Now let us delve a little deeper into the topic. The son of a criminal can be a good person, no doubt, provided he is given a good education he can be a good judge as well. That said, the son of a criminal inherits certain traits from his criminal father like impulsivity, aggression, the capacity for fight, low self-control or esteem. And certain genetic codes in his genes inherited from his criminal father are likely to shape his nature. If the son of a good person and the son of a criminal are given a good education, the latter depicts belligerence, aggression in certain of his behaviours compared to the son of a noncriminal person. But a good environment, like good upbringings, a good education are powerful and pivotal factors in shaping human natures and behaviours and the son of a criminal has every chance to be a morally god citizen. Likewise the daughter of a dancer, the son of a carpenter, the children of farmers inherit a lot of predispositions, temperaments that help them in learning and emulating their parents’ professions better than those who come from different backgrounds.
In the book Pinker rebuts three influential and interconnected idea that have shaped modern thought:
- The Blank Slate: At birth the human mind is a blank slate, and all his behaviours, traits, tendencies are entirely shaped by environment, culture, and upbringing.
- The Noble Savage: At birth humans are pure, peaceful, and altruistic, and society corrupts him in the course of living
- The Ghost in the Machine: The mind is entirely separate from the body and brain-an immaterial essence untouched by biology.
From this we come to know that Pinker strikes a heavy blow to entrenched ideas. A powerful and wide-ranging critique of deeply rooted modern beliefs about human nature that the mind is entirely shaped by culture or environment is something novel that has its base in science, psychology, anthropology and philosophy.
Though he is well accepted by public intellectuals all over the world, but it is no easy task to unwaveringly and conclusively say about human nature and behaviour. It is a complex reality, and our knowledge of human nature is still in infancy. Indeed there are a few strands of criticisms:
He is criticized that some of his ideas are cherry-picking, denying different points of view. His portrayal that social scientists and humanists deny biological factors in shaping human nature. He is wrong since they have a nuanced view where nature and nurture interact. Not all nurture-based theories deny biology; many integrate it with cultural dynamics. His conclusive remarks that humans are in their pathetic conditions, and the question of inequality and gender biases are encoded in their genes are baseless and unfounded suppositions.
Despite these disapprovals they always do not reject Pinker’s core claims but argue for a more balanced, interdisciplinary, and cautious interpretation of human nature.
To conclude, the Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature is a mind-blowing book that helps the reader to understand human nature vividly and scientifically. Humans are not born like empty vessels, and there are some genetic elements he is born with that gives him distinct characters or something unique.
