Y’know about that controversy over the president of Harvard being asked why there are fewer women in certain scientific fields and he conjectured that cognitive differences between the genders, as men score better on certain measures of cognitive ability (e.g., mathematical reasoning) while women score better on others (e.g., verbal reasoning).
Well, it touched off a firestorm of political correctness.
Soon as I heard about it, I wondered what Steven Pinker would say.
Pinker is a linguist and a cognitive scientist who has written a book attacking the regnant idea in much of academia that humans are blank slates whose behavior is exhaustively determined by environment (nurture) rather than genetics (nature). As more and more studies have shown, humans behavior is genetic in far greater degree than many would like to acknowledge.
One chapter in Pinker’s book is on the cognitive differences between men and women.
It’s rather brave of him to take on the subject as, from what I can tell, he is a dyed-in-the-wool liberal and a secular humanist, but he’s a smart guy (one can learn a lot from his books) and willing to follow the facts even when they are contrary to the politically correct viewpoint.
So when I heard about the Harvard president controversy, I wondered what his reaction would be.
Now I know.
Fascinating article, although I’d have some minor disagreements with Pinker. For one, the “sacred” belief in the sameness of the sexes doesn’t just oppose the best scientific data — it opposes common sense. (He didn’t really contradict this, only neglected to mention it.)
It reminds me of a very frustrating argument I once had with a young lady who insisted that many animals aren’t significantly different from us, including dolphins and chimpanzees. I’m sorry, but despite any scientific data regarding animals and tool usage or extremely simple language, none of these animals have architecture, or literature, etc etc etc. None of these animals gather data to study humans and argue about our status. *Sigh*, they’re both dogmas that you can only convince yourself of after an extensive brainwashing in Higher Education.
Well, the mice study us that way.
The dolphins did, too, before they left the earth. Their last attempt at communication with humans translated as “So long, and thanks for all the fish!”
I agree with the comment of “common sense”. I tried to raise my daughter so as not to fit any stereotype. However, she never appreciated playing with a ball, playing outside, rough-play, etc. She is “in” to princesses and babies and dresses, etc.
My son on the other hand is quite the opposite.
We still hope to give them an equal round (home school) education and make sure both can do chores (cooking, cleaning, etc.). But I’ll let them do what is comfortable and desireable for each of them.