By: Chris Pollock on March 2, 2020
The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. G.K. Chesterton Is it possible to be all empiricist, rationalist and nativist at the same time? I wonder if we can combine or wrap up our personal and relative moral leanings as we find our way through our lives by a soulful,…
By: Steve Wingate on March 2, 2020
This book lends itself to be a self-help book. In The Coddling of the American Mind, Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff argue that well-intentioned adults are unwittingly harming young people by raising them in ways that implicitly convey three untruths and that the explicit threats are commonly from the right side of the political spectrum: The Untruth…
By: Shermika Harvey on March 2, 2020
Here’s to another week with Steven Pinker. Nonetheless, this is an election to a more academic approach to desperately search the pages of The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature in hopes to discover common ground. With pure amazement on this rare occasion, commonality was found. Let us dive deeper into this concept,…
By: Harry Fritzenschaft on March 1, 2020
Maher Mali’s review of Pinker’s The Blank Slate takes place 15 years after its publication in 2002. Mali contends that Pinker indicates inborn traits are highly probable rather than pre-determined. Pinker attempts to lay waste to the popular ideas of The Blank Slate (The mind has no instinctive traits), The Noble Savage (it is surrounding…
By: John Muhanji on March 1, 2020
When we are growing up, we heard many stories from our parents, teachers, grandparents, and many other storytellers. But the most story ever spoken as a true one was the one that a child of five months old, abducted by a baboon, and ran with her to the deep forest. The parents searched the child,…
By: Mary Mims on February 29, 2020
From the beginning of time, people have been obsessed with having a variety of traits like other people. We want to be as intelligent, as beautiful, or sophisticated as our neighbors. One of the eye makeup commercials featured a woman with a full, luscious set of black eyelashes, using the tagline: Maybe she’s born with…
By: Nancy VanderRoest on February 29, 2020
Having gone to Western Michigan University during my bachelor’s program and graduating with a minor in Psychology, I thought I owned the world. Our Psych program was based on BF Skinner, who was a behavioral psychologist and I became the best student in my class at teaching rats to drink from a straw utilizing the…
By: Wallace Kamau on February 28, 2020
When I think of human bahaviour, there are many questions that come to mind but one stands out that Pinker’s book, The Blank Slate[1] made me to explore more. Why is it that, for the most part, People use an excuse for not performing as expected or blame a scapegoat when things go wrong? Human…
By: Sean Dean on February 28, 2020
Watching a person that has perfect or absolute pitch (AP) is like watching a magician making things seemingly appear out of thin air. There’s a bit of beauty to it and a bit of bravado as they pick notes off as if they are old friends. It is typically thought that the ability to remember…
By: Digby Wilkinson on February 28, 2020
Another fun book by Steven Pinker this week. The Blank Slate is another volume that attacks certain modern assumptions about the nature of individual human beings.[1] In education and social anthropology, modern prevailing views are based on the expanded work of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, John Dryden[2] and more recently by Margaret Mead.[3] Rousseau was responsible for the…
By: Jenn Burnett on February 28, 2020
The nature versus nurture debate has taken many forms and been informed by many disciplines over the years. The political implications of this discussion have both increased the importance and the risks associated with it. Race, gender, sexual orientation, ability, intelligence have all been among key contentious topics. Interestingly, the most controversial topics of Pinker’s…
By: Karen Rouggly on February 27, 2020
Steven Pinker, author of The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature and many other works, is a Johnstone Family Professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University.[1] Pinker is fascinated with the mind and visual cognition and language play a significant role in our human development. In The Blank Slate, Pinker…
By: Andrea Lathrop on February 27, 2020
My sense of Pinker, now having spent part of two weeks of my life with him, is that he is quite interesting and maddening. I imagine most do not view him neutrally and either love or hate him. As soon I am apt to describe him as cold, he offers something that smacks of warmth.…
By: Harry Edwards on February 27, 2020
Steven Pinker in The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature argues that the popular idea that human beings are born sans innate properties is fallacious. Related concepts such as the Noble Savage and Ghost in the Machine fall under the same misunderstood categories that must be corrected. Pinker offers at least three reasons…
By: John Muhanji on February 27, 2020
The word” Enlightenment” brings with it both positive and negative memories to various communities of the world. It also does the same to the African communities, which still haunts them to date. Africa was a peaceful continent, and people were living in peace in their cultural communities until the enlightenment came up and the need…
By: Rev Jacob Bolton on February 27, 2020
Needless to say, my hope is that every single member of our cohort finishes their dissertation, graduates with honors, earns the highly coveted title “Doctor of Ministry” and then is able to achieve all our hopes and dreams in large part because of the what we have learned together in the Leadership and Global Perspectives…
By: Shawn Cramer on February 27, 2020
Innovation excels with diversity of thought, skills, and importance. As I consider the future of the US and the complex (“wicked”) problems facing it, I see a desperation for creative and innovative solutions, yet an apathy for “reaching across the aisle” in faith and politics. No one side has the worldview, resources, or perspective to…
By: Rhonda Davis on February 27, 2020
Pinker, former director of MIT’s Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, writes about the hot button topic of gender differences in his book, Blank Slate. He begins the discussion with an explanation of the two schools of feminist thought: Equity feminism is part of the classical liberal tradition and opposes sexual discrimination and unfairness to women.[1] Gender…
By: Jer Swigart on February 27, 2020
Tuesday marked the one-year anniversary of my dad’s passing. It was a sacred, impossible, hilarious, formational eight-month journey of liver cancer. I was privileged to accompany him all the way to the river then watched as he took the most difficult step that we take in life’s journey: from this life to the life beyond.…
By: Tammy Dunahoo on February 27, 2020
When she opened the door and opened her arms to me there was a strange complexity of emotion. I suddenly became the infant she never held, angry that she didn’t, but now wanted her to. The violent storm raging inside was unnoticeable on the outside as I walked calmly into her home. We stood in…
