The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature by Steven Pinker. Viking, $27.95, 509 pages.

The News & Observer

January 5, 2003

Starting from Scratch

By Phillip Manning

We begin life with minds that are blank slates to be written on by experience. This theory, first expressed by the philosopher John Locke 300 years ago, still has appeal, especially to new parents who have their own blank slate in a crib in the next room. Read to your babies, blank-slaters advise, and they will love books; talk to them regularly, and they will become articulate; don't spank them, and they will develop into peace-loving adults. Writ large, this notion means that society molds individuals, and if you change society you will change the character of those brought up in it. Unfortunately, this appealing idea is a pipe dream, according to M.I.T. psychology professor Steven Pinker in his important, clearly written, and sure-to-be controversial new book "The Blank Slate."

At birth our slates are filled with genetic information that largely determines what we will become - our intelligence, our penchant for violence, our selection of a vocation. This is why identical twins (which have identical genes) raised apart make eerily similar life choices. It is also why "virtual twins," unrelated children raised together from infancy, can be, as one father put it, "like night and day."

"The Blank Slate" is exciting because Pinker jumps into the middle of one of the most bitter debates in science. The idea that some human behaviors are innate, hard wired into the brain by eons of natural selection, was proposed by Harvard biologist E. O. Wilson in his 1975 book "Sociobiology." Most of the book concerned animal behavior, but in the last chapter, Wilson extended his analysis to humans. He argued that our genes have built language and other widespread human characteristics (known as "universals") into our nature. The slate is not blank, he contended; evolution has already written on it. And some of the writing, such as an inborn tendency for violence, is not pleasant.

The reaction of many academics to Wilson's book was swift and savage. The "Sociobiology Study Group," which included two of Wilson's colleagues at Harvard, Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Lewontin, lumped Wilson "with proponents of eugenics, Social Darwinism, and . . . [a] hypothesis of innate racial differences in intelligence." One member of the group went even further, stating that sociobiology provided "the conceptual framework by which eugenic theory was transformed into genocidal practice" in Nazi Germany. Wilson was vilified on the Harvard campus by protesting students and was stunned by the firestorm his book provoked. But he never responded directly to his antagonists. Now, Pinker has; "The Blank Slate," defends and extends Wilson's ideas and gives the reader an example of some truly pugnacious writing. As Pinker says, "Behavioral science is not for sissies."

Take, for example, the issue of violence. Pinker quotes a well-meaning, blank-slate-loving geneticist: "We know what causes violence in our society: poverty, discrimination, the failure of our education system. It's not the genes that cause violence in our society. It's our social system." The solution to the problem of violence is to eradicate poverty and discrimination and to improve our educational system. Wrong! says Pinker; violence is "part of our design," wired into our genes by aggressive male ancestors who shoved nice guys aside, captured a female, and reproduced.

Although Pinker favors eliminating poverty and discrimination, he believes that the surest way to reduce violence is "Adjudication by an armed authority. . . ." Laws, a criminal justice system, and police are the restraints that make us behave better. He cites male homicide rates of 10 to 60 percent in societies that don't have these institutions. Furthermore, when law enforcement breaks down in civilized societies, violence breaks out - as it did in the Soviet Union and parts of Africa in the 1990s.

Pinker addresses gender issues in a similar head-on fashion. He argues that evolution has organized the brains of men and women differently. Consequently, the two sexes think and behave differently, despite the 1998 claims of feminists such as Bella Abzug and Gloria Steinem. Men are more likely to engage in no-strings-attached sex, violent competition, and murder than women. They take more risks and are better at solving mathematical word problems. Women are more sensitive to sounds and smells and body language than men. Girls play at parenting; boys fight. According to Pinker, these differences are not merely cultural artifacts based on how males and females are brought up. Boys raised as girls still act like boys.

Pinker's arguments are clear, usually persuasive, and backed up by 48 pages of notes and bibliography. Why, then, do so many people (including some scientists) resist them? Perhaps it's because his message seems discouraging. You cannot change your genes or your children's, you can only change the environment. But don't be disheartened; we may not start life with a blank slate, but environment does matter. Indeed, in some circumstances, the environment controls the genes. In his book "Genome," Matt Ridley gives an example of how stress activates a gene that affects the brain, which is why we sometimes feel and act "stressed out." Nature (as represented by the genes) and nurture (as represented by the environment) interact with one another in complicated feedback loops that affect behavior.

Nevertheless, Pinker is right about the biological basis for some human behavior, and that leads to a question: why isn't our species even more violent? We evolved in a hunting-and-gathering society without policemen or laws, a harsh world where might made right. We led lives, as Locke said, that were "nasty, brutish, and short." As one writer Pinker quotes says, "The question . . . we've been trying to answer for the past 30 years is how do children learn to aggress. [But] that's the wrong question. The right question is how do they learn not to aggress."

Pinker believes he has the answer. Humans have always lived in groups, and evolution has willed us the knack for cooperating and empathizing with those close to us - our so-called "moral circle." Modern society has expanded the circle outside our family and clan to include even enemies and criminals. Once common practices such as blood feuds, punishment by mutilation, and execution by torture have vanished from most of the world. "Acknowledging human nature," Pinker writes, is "compatible with social and moral progress." Thus, if our genes are the source of our violence, they are also the solution to it.
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