Subtitled: “The Modern Denial of Human Nature” (Viking, Oct. 2002, 509pp, including 75pp appendix, notes, references, and index)
This is an enormous, thorough book on a topic already covered to some extent by several of the other major books I’ve read in recent years, from E.O. Wilson’s ON HUMAN NATURE (review here), Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan’s SHADOWS OF FORGOTTEN ANCESTORS (notes not yet posted), Jonathan Haidt’s THE RIGHTEOUS MIND (three posts), and more recently read Steven Pinker’s HOW THE MIND WORKS (several posts) and Joshua Greene’s MORAL TRIBES (here). It’s advised to be aware that books like these build upon one another, Greene extending ideas of Haidt for example, so the chronological sequence of these is:
1978: Wilson HUMAN NATURE
199s: Sagan/Druyan SHADOWS
1997: Pinker MIND
2002: Pinker BLANK
2012: Haidt RIGHTEOUS
2013: Greene TRIBES
And maybe even Bregman’s HUMANKIND, 2020, also not yet written up here. And those books about narrative. And others…
The distinguishing feature of this Pinker book is that it’s about not one but three misapprehensions about the human mind: that it’s a “blank slate”; that there is such a thing as a “noble savage”; and that there is a “ghost in the michine,” some nocorporeal force (like a homonculus, or a soul) riding in our brain and making our decisions for us.
