Rating: 
Summary: Excellent work but.....
Review: Mr. Pinker provides illuminating, well written insight into how our minds work. In the process he provides compelling arguments to negate the dreams of social engineers to remake society in the image of the "New Soviet Man", the Nazi Superman, or, by extension, the "New Liberal Man" of the West.Still, one is left with questions. If the human mind were simple enough to comprehend, might we (even Pinker) be too simple to comprehend it? Why are we here? Why do we wonder about such things as human nature and how our minds work? It is there you are deposited, to consider the alternatives.
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Summary: Best book I have read this year: a definitive monograph.
Review: Steven Pinker has become my favorite author. I have an avocational interest in linguistics, and I have admired Pinker's previous books in that field. "The Blank Slate" also treats linguistic topics, but only tangentially, which helps the reader to understand more fully why linguistics and neuro-psychology are rapidly becoming the most important cutting-edge sciences of the 21st century. Pinker's rare combination of insight and communication skills make all of his books--especially this one--very pleasurable reading. Bravo, Dr. Pinker!
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Summary: Oops.
Review: Here Pinker grasps the nettle he shied away from in _How the Mind Works_, addressing the policy implications of evolutionary psychology for all manner of fields. By and large, it's another great book from an author we've come to expect that of. But. Unfortunately, he trips up so badly in his penultimate chapter, on the arts, that it throws his entire thesis into question for any thoughtful reader. We find him here suddenly abandoning all trace of the scientific foundations that have fuelled his other arguments, and inveighing against artistic styles he personally doesn't like, declaring them to be contrary to human nature on the basis of no evidence whatsoever. What are the universals of human artistic response? What is the condition of the arts among hunter-gatherers? What is the natural basis of the arts among human beings? Is it the same for all the arts, and if different, how so, and why? How do the arts of sophisticated civilizations (not just the West) carry on the "natural" tradition evinced among hunter-gatherers? These are fundamental questions that must be addressed before attempting to criticize any type of art on evolutionary-psychological grounds, and there's not a word to be found here about any of them! Instead we get a polemic apparently derived from nothing more than a reading of Tom Wolfe's _From Bauhaus to Our House_ and _The Painted Word_, absorbed in a context of profound ignorance as to what has actually been done in the arts over the past century, and doubly embarrassing for Pinker in that the battle he fights is one long since lost. All I could think of when reading it is William S. Gilbert's "idiot who praises with enthusiastic tone/ All centuries but this...," and that is not a place that a scholar of Pinker's stature wants to find himself.
Rating:
Summary: Food for thought
Review: Excellent book. Wish that it was at least two volumes, because Mr. Pinker had so much to say on the subject of human nature and used only one book to tell it in.
Rating: 
Summary: Overly long badly structured rehash
Review: An overly long, badly structured rehash of material already presented in Pinker's earlier work. Commercial garbage written for money - not out of conviction about the subject matter.
Rating:
Summary: What can I say about this book?
Review: It is hard to know where to begin.
This book is one of the best books of the past 20 years. Of course it could not have been written 20 years ago, there was still so much cutting edge research to be done. And of course there is more to do, but this book hopefully is the first nail in the coffin of postmodernism/cultural relativism. Pinker is a great writer and has a very skillful knack for explaining even the most difficult of subjects. This book is entirely accesseable and even if you dislike what he says, the respect he shows his audience when saying will at least render you open to his argument. He does not seem to know how to invent straw men, and would rather, deal with real opponents anyway.
Without doubt this is the direction the science of human nature is going, we are not blank slates, there are no noble savages, and there appears to be no ghost in the shell. We are not worse off because it is so. This is one of the most uplifting and eyeopening books I have ever read.
My advice, buy one copy for yourself, and one copy for a postmodernist friend.
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Summary: Disappointingly unaware of evolution of self-awareness
Review: I found Dr. Pinker's new book to be very disappointing. He relies on authors known to hold incredibly extreme ideas in developmental and personality psychology (which are not his own areas, so his need for, amd lack of, appropriate scholarly sources are obvious). Yes indeed, Pinker knows language. But he does not seem to know enough about the species called bonobos. And when it comes to the latest brain science about the human capacity for self-awareness, the Blank Slate is rather blank. There is a book, published at the same time as Blank Slate, that understands bonobos and human self-awareness: Liars, Lovers, and Heroes: What the New Brain Science Reveals About How We Become Who We Are, by Steven R. Quartz and Terrence J. Sejnowski. So I'm afraid Pinker's Blank Slate has lost the competitive struggle for being THE breakthrough general psychology book of 2002. Of interest to all, in particular, is the way cognitive neuroscientists Quartz & Sejnowski define the distinction between 'evolutionary psychology' and 'cultural biology' -- this explains why 'evolutionary psychology' flourished in the 20th century but is headed for extinction now, as 'cultural biology' takes over the intellectual life of this scientific ecological niche.
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Summary: A seminal book for Architects and Urbanists
Review: Steven Pinker's new book, "The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature", provides researchers with an impetus to resolve long-standing problems in how mankind relates to its natural and built environments. There is a connection between architecture and urbanism, on the one hand, and inherited structures in the human brain that influence the function of "mind", on the other. Our cognition makes us human -- it is certainly responsible for how we perceive structure. Pinker posits that the modernist movement permeating the arts, architecture, urbanism, philosophy, and the social sciences propagated a monumental deception about the nature of the human mind -- namely, that the mind has no "hard-wired" components, hence everything that defines it is socially imprinted. "The blank slate" refers to the notion that a human being starts with no inborn preferences, and thus acquires all neuronal structures exclusively from external sources. This assumption, upon which so much in the twentieth century has depended, is demonstrated to be false. Pinker argues that, believing it was true, architects, planners, politicians, and others gave themselves permission to try and reshape our world according to their own ideology. That meant ignoring what human beings really need from a biological point of view. In a book of 500 pages, Pinker devotes only about a page or so to architecture and urbanism, but the point is that he is scathingly critical of the modernist, postmodernist, and deconstructivist approaches. This is moreover not a philosophical discussion, but a biologically-based refutal of the intellectual underpinnings for a significant and entrenched establishment. Pinker underlines the disastrous consequences of turning against human nature. In particular, he examines the arrogant state of mind that makes that possible, arguing for a connection between modernist planning and totalitarianism. Pinker accuses architects, urbanists, and legislators for acting contrary to the biological nature of human beings. His book helps to solidify the arguments of anti-modernist critics such as Jane Jacobs, Christopher Alexander, and Léon Krier, by providing them with a biological foundation. While Pinker's book is not about architecture and urbanism, it opens the door to a scientific debate on what type of architecture is more in tune with biological precedent. By focussing on how the human mind reacts to form and environment, the investigation turns away from the imitation of nature. Revealing the biological basis for architecture is indeed a monumental task, yet an important first step has now been made. Some reviewers of this book have brazenly stated that: "no modern scientist believes in the blank slate anymore", as if to imply that Pinker is arguing about outdated topics. Nothing could be further from the truth! Our society tries to understand its own structure, and builds its physical extensions on the earth's surface, guided by the blank slate hypothesis. This conceptual error is therefore mirrored not only in our societal structure, but most importantly in the built environment. It is there that one has to look for the greatest damage this mistaken idea has wrought to our civilization. It is also here -- in the physical form of new buildings and regenerated urban fabric -- that the first corrective steps will be most helpful.
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Summary: The Enscribed Slate
Review: Pinker's academic credentials are certainly impressive but one questions his motives. It wouldn't take much effort to write the converse of his treatise and argue that the emphasis on genetic determinism has overshadowed environmental influences. How many times have we heard the refrain "he/she was born that way" amongst the conversations of the average person. Pinker's fundamental error is the substitution of genetic destiny for genetic predispositions. OBVIOUSLY gentetics plays a role in shaping personality and behavior but the critical question is to what degree are genetic factors overridden by sociocultural influences? What we end up with are ... oversimplifications of socialization processes and post-hoc assumptions that "it must be genetic". Pinker's citations of research that claim to establish genetic determinism are easily countered by the complexity of childhood environments. The variance of personality traits that do not correspond to the overly broad categories of parenting styles does not even begin to cover the potential variance within the hypercomplex environment of a child. Pinker knows this but consistently downplays it. Resorting to unique and non-statistical anecdotes merely compounds the error. The "slate" in certainly not "blank" but the overwhelming plasticity of cultural indoctrination that reveals itself in the form of unique patterns of behavior within a given culture, e.g. dialect, tribalism, diet, fashion, opinion etc. shows that genetic heritage is easily and consistently overridden by socialization. Pinker's simplistic arguments do a diservice to the cause of social reform and will must likely be fodder for the Social Darwinists, his ineffective caveats notwithstanding.
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Summary: This book is not what it seems!
Review: This book is a useful reminder that modern research provides overwhelming evidence that we are shaped by our genes in ways that go well beyond the obvious. Indeed, Pinker's book may be the best available survey of work in this field and it is extremely well written. Unfortunately Pinker has decided to go well beyond the research data and has turned his book into a diatribe against religion. This would be fine if he actually knew something about religion, but mostly he seems to attack straw men and a first year theology student could make mincemeat out of his arguments. Pinker has also decided to address Nietzche's question about whether science doesn't ultimately lead to nihilism. This is a fascinating question, but Pinker addresses this by assuming that all right thinking people subscribe to the same left-leaning utilitarianism as Pinker himself. If you need an introduction to the research on genetic impacts on personality this is book for you, if, that is, you can refrain from being irritated to the shallowness of Pinker's views on just about everyhting else.
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