"There has to be innate circuitry that does the learning, that creates the culture, that acquires the culture, and that responds to socialization"
About this Quote
The subtext is a rebuttal to the social sciences' mid-to-late-20th-century confidence that human behavior can be explained primarily through environment, ideology, and institutions. Pinker’s phrasing makes socialization sound less like an all-powerful sculptor and more like a key that only turns because there’s already a lock. That doesn’t deny cultural variation; it demotes culture from author to co-author, constrained by what neural hardware can efficiently learn, imitate, punish, reward, narrate, and normalize.
Contextually, this sits in Pinker’s larger campaign against the "blank slate" model, drawing on cognitive science, linguistics, and evolutionary psychology. The rhetorical move is strategic: "circuitry" borrows the authority of engineering, implying mechanisms, limits, and testable claims rather than vibes. It’s also a provocation, because it invites the political anxiety that biology equals destiny. Pinker’s intent is the opposite: to argue that acknowledging innate structure is precisely what makes culture intelligible - and why attempts at pure social redesign keep running into human nature like a wall.
Quote Details
| Topic | Learning |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Pinker, Steven. (2026, January 16). There has to be innate circuitry that does the learning, that creates the culture, that acquires the culture, and that responds to socialization. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/there-has-to-be-innate-circuitry-that-does-the-95913/
Chicago Style
Pinker, Steven. "There has to be innate circuitry that does the learning, that creates the culture, that acquires the culture, and that responds to socialization." FixQuotes. January 16, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/there-has-to-be-innate-circuitry-that-does-the-95913/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"There has to be innate circuitry that does the learning, that creates the culture, that acquires the culture, and that responds to socialization." FixQuotes, 16 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/there-has-to-be-innate-circuitry-that-does-the-95913/. Accessed 13 Feb. 2026.
