Excellent ( )

Excellent ( )

I just don't like Pinker, often disagree with him, and find him arrogant ( )

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1289334...

I was really disappointed by this book. Pinker starts out by claiming that he will explain the origins of human emotions, aesthetics, and belief in the context of the latest findings of evolutionary and psychological research. He does not really succeed in doing so. It is a succession of moderately interesting research reports, linked together with a glue of neat one-liners (mostly other people's), but without really coming to a killer conclusion and indeed occasionally resorting to sheer polemic (eg on gender). The section on neural networks is particularly dull, especially as Pinker admits that living brains don't actually function that way.

I found precisely two points of interest in the book, both pretty tangential to the main thrust of the argument. First, of interest only to those who also know her, is that an old family friend is mentioned in passing on the development of children's minds. Second, of more general interest, is the observation that all cultures tend to design ornamental gardens with unconscious reference to the primeval African savannah - lawns and flowerbeds interrupted by carefully placed features. Rather a pleasing thought! This observation is not Pinker's own, but he does give pretty full citations for it which the interested reader can follow up.

I hear that Pinker's other books are better, so shall continue to look out for them though without particular enthusiasm. ( )

Steven Pinker takes a scientific and particularly evolutionary view regarding the brain functions and development of the human mind. This view is (finally) gaining traction in the scientific community.* To me the approach is compelling, although the author feels it necessary to spend some time in this voluminous text (565 pages, not including notes and references) defending the proposition of the brain as a product of evolution.

The book, however, reaches too far. It spends most of its time on functions of the brain and the needs that evolutionary development helped solve; very interesting. Later on in the book, we are given reasons to approach concepts such as gender differences from this view; although further down the road of conjecture, the logic is impelling. However, at the end we enter the realm of philosophy and religion, which simply goes too far.

The fact that our brains are not designed to solve those questions is not very relevant. More relevant would be pondering why we ask these questions in the first place, and why we are often satisfied with answers that do not add any ueful information but in some cases tell us to willingly limit our thinking. But that would be the subject of another equally protracted analysis.

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*An aside: in fact, when read without the baggage of preconcieved religious beliefs, the belated scientific approach to "all things human" is quite shocking. There are other examples of science being used to pursue prejudices which are also losing traction. For example, the attempts to mix the European genetic lineage with Neanderthal shows more signs of an attempt to separate the races than asking questions of under what circumstances this kind of mix could possibly take place. It is scientifically ridiculous to attempt to explain some minor genetic variation in the population, e.g. hair colour, protruding fleshy nose, etc., with a story that would create a relatively massive change that would likely accompany it, i.e., much higher bone mass, strength, protruding cranial features. ( )