Nature versus Nurture: the state of play

The Blank Slate, more readily recognised in its original Latin as tabula rasa, is the soubriquet for the view that in the eternal Nature-Nurture debate the scales tip heavily in favour of the environment: when it comes to the human mind, nothing is left to the caprice of genes. Steven Pinker, well known for The Language Instinct and to a lesser extent How the Mind Works, devotes some 500 pages to refuting this stance. Effectively, then, this book is all about human nature – its validation, characterisation, and neurological basis, along with all its wider moral, political and social baggage.

Given the ambitious theme, and indeed the admirably detailed though sometimes long-winded narrative, it is surprising to find no mention of Sigmund Freud, who might justifiably have claimed to have started this particular ball rolling. After all, Freud renounced the primitive neurology of his day, to use psychoanalysis as a tool for understanding human nature: he earned his place in history by analysing behaviour in the now familiar terms of the atavistic Id, the enabling Ego, and the moralistic Super-ego.