ENGL 1302:037 Spring 2005
Due Tuesday 3 March
30 points
Steven Pinker's purpose in the first part of The Blank Slate is to establish "the ascendance of the Blank Slate in modern intellectual life" (NY, Viking 2002, 3). Pinker asserts that during the past century the doctrine of the Blank Slate has set the agenda for much of the social sciences and humanities. . . . A long and growing list of concepts that would seem natural to the human way of thinking (emotions, kinship, the sexes, illness, nature, the world) are now said to have been "invented" or "socially constructed." The Blank Slate has also served as a sacred scripture for political and ethical beliefs. (6)
Much of the support that Pinker offers for this claim is in his Chapter Two, and it's mostly quoted directly from another secondary book (Carl Degler's In Search of Human Nature, NY: Oxford 1991).
So how can we tell if Pinker's initial claim is accurate? We need to check his work, to ascertain whether Blank Slate doctrines have been as pervasive as he says they've been.
Your assignment: find three articles from the years 1970-1990 that concern human nature in some way. (Use Pinker's list of topics: find articles about "emotions, kinship, the sexes, illness, nature, the world.") One of your articles should be from a popular magazine: Psychology Today, Smithsonian, a newsweekly, The Nation, &c. One of your articles should be from an academic journal -- one where the authors are professors or graduate students, where they're identified by institution, where the editorial board is made up of professors, where the articles have abstracts that summarize the findings. The third article should be from a book that is a collection of articles (whether academic, popular, or something that tries, like Pinker's own work, to bridge that gap).
Your essay should: briefly summarize each of your three articles, especially the articles' main arguments or research findings; quote and/or paraphrase the use of Blank Slate "doctrine" -- or the reverse of Blank Slate doctrine -- in the articles, and show how "Blank Slate" ideas are central to the argument of the articles. You should end your essay with a brief assessment of the validity of Pinker's main claim (quoted above from his p.6).