The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature by Steven Pinker - PREFACE (part 3) | Текст песни

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• The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature by Steven Pinker
• PREFACE (part 3)

PREFACE (part 3)
If you think these are innocuous compromises that show that everyone has outgrown the nature-nurture debate, think again. The quotations come, in fact, from three of the most incendiary books of the last decade. The first is from the Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, who argue that the defference in average IQ scores between American blacks and American whites has both genetic and environmental causes.

The second is from The Nurture Assumption by Judith Rich Harris, who argues that children's personalities are shapes by their genes as well as by their anvironments, so similarities between children and their parents may come from their shared genes and not just from the effects of parenting.

The third is from A Natural History of Rape by Randy Thornhill and Craig Palmer, who argue that rape is not simply a product of culture but also has roots in the nature of man's sexuality. For invoking nurture and nature, not nurture alone, these authors have been picketed, shouted down, subjected to searing invective in the press, even denounced in Congress. Others expressing such opinions have been censored, assaulted, or threatened with creminal prosecution.