November 19, 2002
THE RIGHT TURNS PINKER?:
Techsploits: Right-Wing Darwinism (Annalee Newitz, 11/14/02, MetroActive)REPUBLICANS swept the recent elections, and now we have to wonder what this will mean for science. Although many have argued that good science should be apolitical, unfortunately this isn't the case. The U.S. government is far too involved in science funding and policy-making for a rightward shift in Congress to make no difference. And yet perhaps science is changing the right wing as much as the right wing is changing science.Case in point: Steven Pinker, Darwinism's new poster boy and the author of a several highly acclaimed books about evolution and the brain. His latest book, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature, is a kind of rejoinder to the work of pundits like the late Stephen Jay Gould, who argued that human beings are as much a product of their environments as they are their genes. Last week, I attended a lecture by Pinker on this very topic, in which he argued quite plainly that all of human nature is, in fact, biological. "There is no 'ghost in the machine'," he explained with a chuckle. "It's all just feedback and control in the brain."
The notion that this denial of free will and the human soul has any appeal to the Right is, of course, absurd. However, any rigorous application of the scientific method is deadly for liberalism, which is based on a utopian understanding of human nature, so I guess she's right to be scared. Posted by Orrin Judd at November 19, 2002 12:30 PM
Darwinism does not deny free well, even if Pinker does. Darwinism is silent on free will. See Monod, "Chance and Necessity."
If you're going to attack it, at least attack it for what it actually says and not the dull caricature that passes for understanding amongst the general.
Darwin didn't, modern darwinism (evolutionary psychology in particular) does. Pinker's hardly the general public.
Posted by: oj at November 19, 2002 9:38 PMWhat has, or should
have appeal for the Right is the emerging preponderance of empirical evidence in support of an essential human nature -- a human nature which cannot be wiped away by legislation or even coercion and force. We may disdain the materialist when his denial of free will ("the brain secretes thought like the liver secretes bile") makes his life and the world an unassailable contradiction, but when science lends credence to the Burkean vision of human nature, the Right cannot help but cheer.
Interesting thoughts about "essential human nature"; but what is it, really? since human behavior seems to be so malleable and influenced by the "nurture" side of the nature/nurture debate (though of course, nature plays its part). I'm currently rereading Pryce-Jones's "The Closed Circle," (his fascinating, if shocking,
socio-historical analysis of Arab culture) whose first several chapters (of less than 100 pages) should be required reading for anyone who hopes to understand anything about the region...
Those interested in Pinker's book will find a good critical review of it by the philosopher Simon Blackburn at the New Republic Online:
http://www.thenewrepublic.com/doc.mhtml?i=20021125&s=blackburn112502