|
Writ
large all over this otherwise scholarly book on the nature-versus-nurture
tug-o-war is an acute sense of pique-at the "boo-word that's
frequently (and inaccurately) hurled at any explanation of a behavioral
tendency that mentions evolution or genetics". If it's so clear
that both the environment and genes maketh a man, it asks, why deny
"human nature"?
Steven Pinker, a Harvard professor of psychology,
affirms his scientific credibility in the first three pages of Part
I. And then deploys a cogent set of evidence-yes, separated twins
too-to shatter the Blank Slate portrait of the human brain (the
idea, that is, of a brain born free of innate characteristics that
later gets inscripted or 'nurtured' by the environment). To make
his primary point, he deftly knocks down the other two cultural
icons of this so-called "Holy Trinity" as well: the Noble
Savage (the romantic casting of untainted-by-civilisation nobility)
and the Ghost in the Machine (the age-old notion of a distinct spirit
in the body).
|
|
|
The Blank Slate
By Steven Pinker
Penguin
Price: Rs 1,389.12
PP: 508
|
The real touchy issue, however,
is the genetic component of 'intelligence', a theme on which Richard
Herrnstein and Charles Murray's 1994 book, The Bell Curve raised
such hell. Pinker, for his part, wants everybody to sober up and
face the statistical finding that "about
half of the variation in intelligence, personality and life outcomes
is heritable". And he delivers this exhortation with disarming
charm, letting on that this 'heritability', as defined, actually
rises over a lifespan. His advice: "Think 'Omigod, I'm turning
into my parents!'"
The book's purpose, though, is to rescue scientific
truth from America's race rhetoric-which Pinker considers hostage
to deep dark fears of nature-based logic from olden days. He does
an admirably insightful job of putting some of these fears (of social
inequality, human imperfectability, genetic determinism and terminal
nihilism) on the couch and picking the follies of each. Nature matters
enormously, but to think that what's 'natural' must also be 'good'
is a fallacy, for instance, in his view.
Genetic reality, the author argues, ought to
have no bearing on independently desired ideals. Such as equity
and justice (as John Rawls would have it). "We must pry these
values away from claims about our psychological make-up that are
vulnerable to being proven false." His point: why lose on some
genomic technicality?
So far, so sensible. Yet, Pinker can't resist
the urge to psychoanalyse his nurture-awed opponents over and over.
He does this with wry wit, whether it's Sprite's ad campaign, the
'breakthrough' made by the self-deceiver Z in the 1999 film Antz,
or the liberal effort to take morality out of sex and put it into
Barbie-the leggy blonde that hath come to ordain all eugenic preferences.
"Beauty, they say, consists of arbitrary standards dictated
by an elite," Pinker chortles.
It is here, in its sneering attempt to savage
Post Modernism, that the book reveals its imagination deficit. Pinker
cannot imagine why one might intelligently doubt what's defined
and projected, all so often, as 'the objective truth'. Even IQ,
for argument's sake, assumes the infallibility of quantifying 'intelligence'
on a linear scale, and that too, on the basis of tests that do no
more than conform to somebody's notion of unbiased measurement.
Barbified braininess, if you will. This IQ scale is the very premise
of the Bell Curve, which is-ahem-a 'normal distribution', shapely
enough to form this alluring image for people to internalise. And
slot themselves up by. Sorry, the Bell Curve still gets a 'boo'.
|
|
|
The Eleven Pictures Of Time
By C.K. Raju
Sage
Price: Rs 695
PP: 585
|
Written
to take on Stephen Hawking's portrayal of 'time', this is an eclectic
book. Even if its Ayasofya-clock cover, title, subtitle- The physics,
philosophy and politics of time beliefs-and jacket blurb fail to
convince you of its relevance to the Clash Of Civilisations thesis,
C.K. Raju, a computer scientist, deserves a hearing.
The cyclic-versus-linear dichotomy is a laugh,
he argues, before laying down several other concepts of time, graphically
illustrated. Raju alleges that the ancient concept of quasicyclic
time has fallen victim to Western propaganda premised on linear
"apocalyptic" time, and that this projection of 'soft
power' is still in evidence, despite rational rethinks induced by
Relativity's curvilinear time.
No less uproarious, perhaps, is Raju's dicey
analysis of how quantum mechanics' probabilistic view corresponds
to 'ontically broken time'-the belief in which, he contends, once
resulted in 'Providence' winning a historic debate over 'Free Will'.
The pedantry-averse, by the way, could stop
short at a sub-chapter titled Brave New Physics and jump 300 pages
(the book defies chronology). You'd miss some brain-rackers on pond
ripples, half-dead cats, quantum dances (a la Idea cellular jockey)
and the sort. A flip-back to Godel's self-subversive logic, though,
would help even the lay reader.
Parts of this book seem too far-fetched (some
might put sophistry a mere quantum warp away) to challenge Hawking.
But it's a well-thought book that mustn't be dismissed offhand.
Pictures of time-no kiddin'-are pictures of time. Think: we might
not have conceived any of them half as accurately as we'd like to
think.
 Yes,
You Can Time The Market
By Ben Stein and Phil DeMuth
Wiley
Price: Rs 1,240.02
PP: 193
An investment advisor and economic humorist team up to recommend
the 'safe' (seriously safe) strategy of timing the stock market.
Think valuations, and be patient.
 The
Viagra Myth
By Abraham Morgentaler
Jossey Bass
Price: Rs 1,150
PP: 207
The social and psychological story of erectile dysfunction, Viagra,
performance anxiety and pill-dependent relationships, written by
a Harvard Medical School professor. It's a cautionary tale.
|
