Canadian - Scientist | September 18, 1954 -
Cognitive psychology has shown that the mind best understands facts when they are woven into a conceptual fabric, such as a narrative, mental map, or intuitive theory. Disconnected facts in the mind are like unlinked pages on the Web: They might as well not exist.
Steven Pinker
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I don't consider myself to be that radical a thinker.
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People today sometimes get uncomfortable with empirical claims that seem to clash with their political assumptions, often because they haven't given much thought to the connections.
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Why are empirical questions about how the mind works so weighted down with political and moral and emotional baggage?
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By exploring the political and moral colorings of discoveries about what makes us tick, we can have a more honest science and a less fearful intellectual milieu.
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But in most cases even the possibility that the correlations reflect shared genes is taboo.
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The great appeal of the doctrine that the mind is a blank slate is the simple mathematical fact that zero equals zero.
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As many political writers have pointed out, commitment to political equality is not an empirical claim that people are clones.
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But the newest research is showing that many properties of the brain are genetically organized, and don't depend on information coming in from the senses.
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Evolutionary psychology is one of four sciences that are bringing human nature back into the picture.
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So no, it's not all in the genes, but what isn't in the genes isn't in the family environment either. It can't be explained in terms of the overall personalities or the child-rearing practices of parents.
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I think this confusion leads intellectuals and artists themselves to believe that the elite arts and humanities are a kind of higher, exalted form of human endeavor.
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