The Blank Slate summary

For much of the twentieth century, social scientists were attracted to the Blank Slate theory since it meant that humans didn’t have any predisposition to be racist or sexist. Any display of these behaviors could be blamed on some outside force causing people to learn them. With the Blank Slate, cultural behavior could exist neatly separate from the realm of the brain, genetics and evolution.

But today we know this is not the case. Cultural behavior is indeed part of our evolutionary development, the same remarkable process that allows every creature to survive, thrive and pass on their genes to the next generation.

Over the past few centuries, science has made a series of amazing breakthroughs in unifying various fields of knowledge to explain life’s mysteries.

It began in the seventeenth century with Isaac Newton, who broke down the wall between the Earth and the cosmos with his law of gravity. This law perfectly described how all objects in the universe move.

You might think that these advancements in genetic science would be enough to sink the Blank Slate theory for good. But those who latched onto this theory aren’t ready to give up yet.

In 2001, when the entire human genome was first decoded, blank slate theorists thought they had the proof for which they’d been searching. Many scientists were surprised when the full genome was published, and it only contained 34,000 genes, instead of the 50,000 to 100,000 genes that most geneticists were expecting.

One of the reasons the blank slate theory is so appealing is that it means everyone is truly born equal. That’s why the fact that we’re born with biological differences has been met with serious political opposition.

In the 1970s, there was a radical science movement from the left that attacked the possibility of human nature being more complex than the blank slate.

It can be troubling to face the reality of a situation, which is exactly what abandoning the blank slate requires. In the 1970s, centuries of slavery followed by the horrors of the Holocaust were still fresh in the minds of people around the world. Little wonder that the Blank Slate theory offered a comforting vision of equality.

Instead, people had to face the fact that people are innately different, and this gave rise to many fears that genetics would be used to justify inequality.

Another comforting aspect of the blank slate was the amount of control it provided over how a person turned out. With perfectly loving parents and the best schooling, an infant was guaranteed to become a model child – in theory, anyway.

But once we acknowledge the important role genetics plays in shaping our behaviors, we’re faced with an existential dilemma of how much control we really have over our destiny. Are we doomed to turn out like our mothers or fathers?

With a hundred billion neurons linked by a hundred trillion connections, the human brain is an organ of staggering complexity. But what’s it all for?

The brain’s primary purpose is to help us process the world around us in a way that gives our species the best chance for survival. But more than that, it also constructs reality for us.

Over millennia, different groups have tried to put blanket labels on humanity. Classical economists have characterized humans as amoral and driven only by self-interest, while utopian socialists have argued that humans want to look out for one another and be united in one cause.

The truth is, neither of these labels is a perfect fit. We’re not exactly selfish egoists or selfless altruists.

As you can tell by now, the debate over the science of human nature has been a crowded minefield. There are religious implications as well as issues of sexual identity. And there’s also the curious fact that our political leanings may be hereditary.

Remember the behavioral similarities between identical twins who were separated at birth? Not only can they grow up to prefer the same cigarette brand, but they also tend to have the same political preferences.

A relatively short time ago, women were expected to be no more than obedient housewives and doting mothers. While this perception has changed in the United States, women are still experiencing discrimination, condescension and sexual harassment every day.

While the women’s liberation movement and feminism are rightfully considered major historic achievements, there is at least one branch of feminism that has refuted the modern understanding of human nature. This is gender feminism, which argues that the only difference between boys and girls is their genitalia.

In 2000, the psychologist Eric Turkheimer proposed three basic laws of behavioral genetics based on the empirical results of many tests and, perhaps unsurprisingly, they don’t support the blank slate theory.

The first law of behavioral genetics is that “all human behavioral traits are heritable.”

For a while now, American schools have been cutting back on subjects like art and music while focusing more on science and technology. Many advocates for the arts have protested this development in US education and believe the arts are in danger of disappearing. But some signs may help them rest easy.

It turns out that the arts aren’t suffering much at all these days, likely because art is in our genes.