Writing Worth Reading
Writing Worth Reading
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.
Two books to go.
Yes, so these are two gigantic books, both very famous, which really should be read by anyone interested in this world. And the first is called The Blank Slate by Steven Pinker and the second is called Consilience by Edward O Wilson. And these books are both landmarks of our time.
Stephen Pinker is a psychologist at Harvard, though until 2003 he taught in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT.
Yes. 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 that that’s wrong. Some of it involves brain structure, a lot of it involves genetics. 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. I would say that he is overly reliant on genetic explanations, but it’s still a very important book.
So, although the book is called Blank Slate, he’s actually arguing the opposite. Would you say it’s accessible to a non-scientist?
Yes, all of these books I’ve chosen are very accessible.
Read full interview
David Brooks is a columnist for the New York Times who writes about politics and American culture. He joined the Weekly Standard at its inception in 1995, and prior to that was op-ed editor at the Wall Street Journal. His books include Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There and On Paradise Drive: How We Live Now (and Always Have) in the Future Tense. He argues that it will soon be hard to understand anything about the world around us without a knowledge of the unconscious workings of the brain. So we may as well make a start now, by reading the five books he recommends on neuroscience. The working title of his own book on the subject, due out in January 2011, is How Success Happens.
