The Model Thinker by Scott E. Page

摘要

Discussions on gender are a minefield of opinions,with gender too frequently the loser to agenda.This is not surprising, given the complexity ofthe discussion, but it is unhelpfully muddied byopinions which are not grounded in evidence andcoloured by bias. Nevertheless, conversation whichseeks to put evidence at its core helps to move thediscussion onto a more useful level. Gina Rippon’sThe Gendered Brain does just this, drawing on work in cognitiveneuroscience and psychology to tackle the issues surroundinggender. Outside of the gender debate, neuroscience promises to pushforward various stale philosophical discussions, and it is no differentin this case.Surprisingly, Gina Rippon turns to the history of science for thesource of many unfounded conclusions, deftly outlining how sciencehas been guilty of serving a sexist social agenda. She describes howscience research has pushed the idea of a male and a female brain, inthe past often based on outlandish experiments, such as skull volumemeasurements using bird seed. Even recently, despite the advent ofbrain imaging techniques, conclusions have been declared regardingmale–female differences which are often unsubstantiated. However,her point is not that there are necessarily no differences betweenmale and female brains, but that the evidence accumulated so far isinconclusive. Certainly, the kinds of differences we hear sometimes,like women are inherently worse at spatial tasks, therefore are lessequipped for a career in engineering, are not robustly supported andare woefully unfair: we exist in a rule-based environment and ourbrains are extremely adept at identifying these rules, however biased.It is perhaps lacking in discussion on sex differences elsewhere inthe animal kingdom, as surely this is important when consideringour own, but generally it is a well-balanced book, with fascinatinginformation about our social brain, babies’ brains, and the issuesaround binary gender identity.