The Blank Slate

by Steven Pinker

Both my last books are very famous, they are landmarks of our time and I feel that everyone should read them. Blank Slate is an argument against the old view that there is no such thing as human nature, that we’re all culturally determined. He brings together a ton of evidence: some of it involves brain structure, a lot of it involves genetics. I would say that he is overly reliant on genetic explanations, but it’s still a very important book. He doesn’t really think of it this way, but a lot of it is about the unique qualities that guide behaviour that we’re not aware of.