The book explains the concept of the Blank Slate, basically the believe (coming from the 17th century more or less) that human beings are born with no knowledge, no innate skills, no mental framework, nothing in our minds. Everything we learn and become is acquired throughout our interactions with the environment: society, culture, etc. Pinker goes to explain all the philosophical, societal, economic implications of that belief.
After that Pinker goes to explain, biology, evolution, psychology, and other areas of scientific knowledge to dissect tiny bit by tiny bit our brains, our minds, our behaviour how and to what extent we could be “programmed” to survive in this world. Human Nature actually exists. How come can we learn a language (any language depending on where we are born), its basic rules and vocabulary just by listening to adults? Our brains must have evolved to master a language. Brains must have some sort of mechanism that makes us learn languages. But we are not born knowing them. There are dozens of examples better than the language one in the book which explain how we are not born empty.
The book ends with discussions on 5 Moral Debates which are rooted on the Blank Slate – Human Nature debate: Politics, Violence Gender, Children and The Arts. This last one with a critique of Postmodernism and references to 1984, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and more.
A nice quote: "education is a technology that tries to make up for what the human mind is innately bad at. Children don't have to go to school to learn how to walk, talk, recognise objects or remember the personalities of their friends, even though these tasks are much harder than reading, adding or remembering dates in history."
Great Read. Long but great!
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