The Blank Slate by Steven Pinker
Published 2002 · 768 pages · 170,000 words · about 12 hours at an average pace · Nonfiction, Psychology, Science & Nature
How hard is The Blank Slate to read?
The Blank Slate scores 35 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it moderately challenging. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 42 out of 100
- Scientific terminology from genetics, psychology, and philosophy. Explained clearly.
- Sentence structure: 38 out of 100
- Abstraction: 50 out of 100
- Sustained argument about the relationship between biology, culture, and morality.
- Information density: 55 out of 100
- Dense with research findings, philosophical arguments, and cultural examples.
- Narrative indirection: 15 out of 100
- Direct argumentative structure. Thesis, evidence, implications.
- Symbolic density: 15 out of 100
- The blank slate, ghost in the machine, and noble savage are metaphors being critiqued.
- Ironic distance: 20 out of 100
- Pinker writes with confident wit, especially when dismantling opponents.
- Resolution withholding: 100 out of 100
- Clear thesis argued throughout and resolved in the final section.
- Structural complexity: 30 out of 100
- Six parts with clear thematic organization. Well-structured argument.
How The Blank Slate is regarded
The Blank Slate holds a literary regard score of 53 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.