‘The great enemy of thought and creativity is the received idea,” Siri Hustvedt writes, and woe to the lazy purveyor of unexamined “truths” who comes under her sharp scrutiny in this stimulating essay collection. It doesn’t matter who they are or what their credentials are; well-known sociobiologist E.O. Wilson and evolutionary psychologist Steven Pinker, both Harvard professors, are among those whose glib certainties she coolly dismantles.