tdaxp

Today I read the first section of the three books that are (unofficially) on the reading list for Genetic Politics, a class taught by an innovative researcher that I am looking forward too. I tried to take my notes by subject, and I have illuminated them with graphics when possible. The three portions I read were:

• "Preface," by Steven Pinker, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature, 2002, pg vii- xiii, http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0670031518/102-4292267-8637755?v=glance&n=283155.
• "Prologue: Twelve Hairy Men," by Matt Ridley, Nature via Nurture: Genes, Experience, & What Makes Us Human, 2003, pg 1-6, http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0060006781/102-4292267-8637755?v=glance&n=283155.
• "Introduction," by David Buller, Adapting Minds: Evolutionary Psychology and the Persistent Quest for Human Nature, 2005, pg 1-16, http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0262025795/102-4292267-8637755?v=glance&n=283155.

Interesting, Adapting Minds was featured on Gene Expression, a genetics blog that I have been frequenting. You can read more here, or over there.

Topic: Press Incompetence and Bias

"The refusal to acknowledge human nature is like the Victorians' embarrassment about sex, only worse: ti distorts our science and scholarship, our public discourse, and our day-to-day lives." (Pinker ix)
"'Revealed: the secret of human behaviour," read the banner headline in the British Sunday newspaper the Observer on 11 February 2001. 'Environment, not genes, key to our acts.'" (Ridley 1)
"It [nature v. nurture] had divided fascists from communists as neatly as their politics." (Ridley 3)
"For invoking nurture and nature, not nurture alone, these authors have been picketed, shouted down, subjected to searing invective in the press, even denounced in Congress." (Pinker viii)
"During almost every wait in the supermarket checkout line, I would find reference to the evolutionary psychology of human mating on the covers of women's and men's magazines." (Buller 3).
"I found that published criticisms of evolutionary psychology typically contained more vitriol than serious analysis of the reasoning and evidence behind the claims made by evolutionary psychologists... Accordingly, it was too easy to find critics attacking evolutionary psychology for its 'directly political dimension' and its 'culturally pernicious' political claims." (Buller 4)