Steven Arthur Pinker is a
Canadian-AmericanA Canadian American is someone who was born or someone who grew up in Canada then moved to the United States. The term is particularly apt when applied or self-applied to people with strong ties to Canada, such as those who have lived a significant portion of their lives in, or were educated in,...
experimental psychologistExperimental psychology is a methodological approach, rather than a subject, and encompasses varied fields within psychology. Experimental psychologists have traditionally conducted research, published articles, and taught classes on neuroscience, developmental psychology, sensation, perception,...
,
cognitive scientistCognitive science is the interdisciplinary scientific study of mind and its processes. It examines what cognition is, what it does and how it works. It includes research on how information is processed , represented, and transformed in behaviour, nervous system or machine...
,
linguistLinguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
and
popular sciencePopular science, sometimes called literature of science, is interpretation of science intended for a general audience. While science journalism focuses on recent scientific developments, popular science is broad-ranging, often written by scientists as well as journalists, and is presented in many...
author. He is a
Harvard CollegeHarvard College, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is one of two schools within Harvard University granting undergraduate degrees...
Professor and the Johnstone Family Professor in the Department of Psychology at
Harvard UniversityHarvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
and is known for his advocacy of
evolutionary psychologyEvolutionary psychology is an approach in the social and natural sciences that examines psychological traits such as memory, perception, and language from a modern evolutionary perspective. It seeks to identify which human psychological traits are evolved adaptations, that is, the functional...
and the
computational theory of mindIn philosophy, the computational theory of mind is the view that the human mind is an information processing system and that thinking is a form of computing. The theory was proposed in its modern form by Hilary Putnam in 1961 and developed by Jerry Fodor in the 60s and 70s...
.
Pinker’s academic specializations are
visual cognitionPerception is the process of attaining awareness or understanding of the environment by organizing and interpreting sensory information. All perception involves signals in the nervous system, which in turn result from physical stimulation of the sense organs...
and
psycholinguisticsPsycholinguistics or psychology of language is the study of the psychological and neurobiological factors that enable humans to acquire, use, comprehend and produce language. Initial forays into psycholinguistics were largely philosophical ventures, due mainly to a lack of cohesive data on how the...
. His academic pursuits include experiments on mental imagery, shape recognition, visual attention, children's language development, regular and irregular phenomena in language, the neural bases of words and grammar, and the psychology of innuendo and euphemism. He published two technical books which proposed a general theory of language acquisition and applied it to children's learning of verbs. In his less academic books, he argued that language is an "instinct" or
biological adaptationAn adaptation in biology is a trait with a current functional role in the life history of an organism that is maintained and evolved by means of natural selection. An adaptation refers to both the current state of being adapted and to the dynamic evolutionary process that leads to the adaptation....
shaped by
natural selectionNatural selection is the nonrandom process by which biologic traits become either more or less common in a population as a function of differential reproduction of their bearers. It is a key mechanism of evolution....
. On this point, he opposes
Noam ChomskyAvram Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, and activist. He is an Institute Professor and Professor in the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT, where he has worked for over 50 years. Chomsky has been described as the "father of modern linguistics" and...
and others who regard the human capacity for language to be the by-product of other adaptations. He is the author of six books for a general audience, which include
The Language InstinctThe Language Instinct is a book by Steven Pinker for a general audience, published in 1994. In it, Pinker argues that humans are born with an innate capacity for language. In addition, he deals sympathetically with Noam Chomsky's claim that all human language shows evidence of a universal grammar...
(1994),
How the Mind WorksHow the Mind Works is a book by Canadian-American cognitive scientist Steven Pinker, published in 1997. The book attempts to explain some of the human mind's poorly understood functions and quirks in evolutionary terms...
(1997),
Words and RulesWords and Rules: The Ingredients of Language is a 1999 popular linguistics book by Steven Pinker on the subject of regular and irregular verbs...
(2000),
The Blank SlateThe Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature is a best-selling 2002 book by Steven Pinker arguing against tabula rasa models of the social sciences. Pinker argues that human behavior is substantially shaped by evolutionary psychological adaptations...
(2002),
The Stuff of ThoughtThe Stuff of Thought: Language As a Window Into Human Nature is a New York Times best-selling book by Harvard experimental psychologist Steven Pinker published in 2007...
(2007), and
The Better Angels of Our NatureThe Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined is a 2011 book by Steven Pinker arguing that violence in the world, especially the western part, has declined both in the long run and in the short...
(2011).
Career
Pinker was born in
Montreal, Quebec, CanadaMontreal is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the seventh largest in North America...
, in 1954, and graduated from
Dawson CollegeDawson College was the first English CEGEP and is located in Westmount, just west of downtown Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Dawson College is located near the heart of downtown Montreal in a former nunnery on 4.85 hectares of green space...
in 1971. He received a
BAA Bachelor of Arts , from the Latin artium baccalaureus, is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, the sciences, or both...
degree in
psychologyPsychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...
at
McGill UniversityMohammed Fathy is a public research university located in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The university bears the name of James McGill, a prominent Montreal merchant from Glasgow, Scotland, whose bequest formed the beginning of the university...
in 1976, and then went on to earn his
PhDDoctor of Philosophy, abbreviated as Ph.D., PhD, D.Phil., or DPhil , in English-speaking countries, is a postgraduate academic degree awarded by universities...
degree in
experimental psychologyExperimental psychology is a methodological approach, rather than a subject, and encompasses varied fields within psychology. Experimental psychologists have traditionally conducted research, published articles, and taught classes on neuroscience, developmental psychology, sensation, perception,...
at
Harvard UniversityHarvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
in 1979. He did research at the
Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyThe Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...
(MIT) for a year, after which he became an assistant professor at Harvard and then
Stanford UniversityThe Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
. From 1982 until 2003, Pinker taught at the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT, and eventually became the director of the Center for
Cognitive NeuroscienceCognitive neuroscience is an academic field concerned with the scientific study of biological substrates underlying cognition, with a specific focus on the neural substrates of mental processes. It addresses the questions of how psychological/cognitive functions are produced by the brain...
, taking a one-year sabbatical at the
University of California, Santa BarbaraThe University of California, Santa Barbara, commonly known as UCSB or UC Santa Barbara, is a public research university and one of the 10 general campuses of the University of California system. The main campus is located on a site in Goleta, California, from Santa Barbara and northwest of Los...
, in 1995-6. As of 2008, he is the Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology at Harvard. In June 2011 it was announced he would join the professoriate of
New College of the HumanitiesNew College of the Humanities is a proposed new private for-profit undergraduate college in London, England, the creation of which was announced in June 2011 by the philosopher A.C. Grayling, its founder and first master...
, a private college in London.
Pinker was named one of Time Magazine's 100 most influential scientists and thinkers in the world in 2004 and one of
ProspectProspect is a monthly British general interest magazine, specialising in politics and current affairs. Frequent topics include British, European, and US politics, social issues, art, literature, cinema, science, the media, history, philosophy, and psychology...
and Foreign Policys 100 top public intellectuals in both years the poll was carried out, 2005 and 2008; in 2010 he was named by Foreign Policy magazine to its list of top global thinkers. His research in cognitive psychology has won the Early Career Award (1984) and Boyd McCandless Award (1986) from the
American Psychological AssociationThe American Psychological Association is the largest scientific and professional organization of psychologists in the United States. It is the world's largest association of psychologists with around 154,000 members including scientists, educators, clinicians, consultants and students. The APA...
, the
Troland Research AwardThe Troland Research Awards are an annual prize given by the United States National Academy of Sciences to two researchers under the age of 40 in recognition of psychological research on the relationship between consciousness and the physical world....
(1993) from the
National Academy of SciencesThe National Academy of Sciences is a corporation in the United States whose members serve pro bono as "advisers to the nation on science, engineering, and medicine." As a national academy, new members of the organization are elected annually by current members, based on their distinguished and...
, the Henry Dale Prize (2004) from the Royal Institution of Great Britain, and the George Miller Prize (2010) from the
Cognitive Neuroscience SocietyThe Cognitive Neuroscience Society is an international academic society interested in multi-disciplinary approaches to cognitive brain function. Drawing primarily from the biological and psychological sciences, society members are involved in cognitive neuroscience research that attempts to...
. He has also received honorary doctorates from the universities of Newcastle,
SurreyThe University of Surrey is a university located within the county town of Guildford, Surrey in the South East of England. It received its charter on 9 September 1966, and was previously situated near Battersea Park in south-west London. The institution was known as Battersea College of Technology...
,
Tel AvivTel Aviv University is a public university located in Ramat Aviv, Tel Aviv, Israel. With nearly 30,000 students, TAU is Israel's largest university.-History:...
,
McGillMohammed Fathy is a public research university located in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The university bears the name of James McGill, a prominent Montreal merchant from Glasgow, Scotland, whose bequest formed the beginning of the university...
, and the
University of TromsøThe University of Tromsø is the world's northernmost university. Located in the city of Tromsø, Norway, it was established in 1968, and opened in 1972. It is one of eight universities in Norway. The University of Tromsø is the largest research and educational institution in northern Norway...
, Norway. He was twice a finalist for the
Pulitzer PrizeThe Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...
, in 1998 and in 2003.
In January 2005, Pinker defended
Lawrence SummersLawrence Henry Summers is an American economist. He served as the 71st United States Secretary of the Treasury from 1999 to 2001 under President Bill Clinton. He was Director of the White House United States National Economic Council for President Barack Obama until November 2010.Summers is the...
, President of Harvard University, whose comments about a
gender gapGender gap may refer to:*Gender differences in a general psycho-social context*Gender pay gap*Income disparity by gender in a purely economic context*The Global Gender Gap Report*Father's rights in child custody determinations of family courts...
in mathematics and science angered much of the faculty. Pinker noted that Summers's remarks, properly understood, could form the basis of a testable hypothesis. The remarks, Pinker said, claimed not that men are consistently smarter, but that there are "more idiots, [and] more geniuses" of the male gender.
On May 13, 2006, Pinker received the
American Humanist AssociationThe American Humanist Association is an educational organization in the United States that advances Humanism. "Humanism is a progressive philosophy of life that, without theism and other supernatural beliefs, affirms our ability and responsibility to lead ethical lives of personal fulfillment that...
's Humanist of the Year award for his contributions to public understanding of human evolution.
In 2009, Pinker wrote a highly critical review of
Malcolm GladwellMalcolm Gladwell, CM is a Canadian journalist, bestselling author, and speaker. He is currently based in New York City and has been a staff writer for The New Yorker since 1996...
's analytic methods in the New York Times. Gladwell published a rebuttal in the Times regarding Pinker's comments about the importance of
IQAn intelligence quotient, or IQ, is a score derived from one of several different standardized tests designed to assess intelligence. When modern IQ tests are constructed, the mean score within an age group is set to 100 and the standard deviation to 15...
on teaching performance and by analogy, the effect, if any, of draft order on quarterback performance in the
National Football LeagueThe National Football League is the highest level of professional American football in the United States, and is considered the top professional American football league in the world. It was formed by eleven teams in 1920 as the American Professional Football Association, with the league changing...
. Pinker then responded to Gladwell's rebuttal. The exchange prompted
Advanced NFL StatsAdvanced NFL Stats is a website dedicated to the analysis of the National Football League using advanced mathematical and statistical methods. The site's lead author is noted football researcher and analyst Brian Burke...
to step in and address the issue statistically, siding with Pinker in that draft order is indeed correlated with quarterback performance.
Pinker also serves on the Advisory Board of
Secular Coalition for AmericaThe Secular Coalition for America is an advocacy group located in Washington D.C., representing atheists, humanists, freethinkers, agnostics, and other non-theistic people with a naturalistic worldview in American politics. Sean Faircloth, a five-term Maine state legislator, served as Executive...
and offers advice to Executive Director
Sean FairclothSean Faircloth is a Maine attorney and politician. He served five terms in the Maine Legislature. Faircloth served on the Judiciary and Appropriations Committee. In his final term, Faircloth was elected Majority Whip...
and the entire coalition on the acceptance and inclusion of nontheism in American life.
The Committee for Skeptical Inquiry lists Pinker as one of their fellows.
In February 2010 he was named to the
Freedom From Religion FoundationThe Freedom From Religion Foundation is an American freethought organization based in Madison, Wisconsin. Its purposes, as stated in its bylaws, are to promote the separation of church and state and to educate the public on matters relating to atheism, agnosticism and nontheism. The FFRF publishes...
's Honorary Board of distinguished achievers.
Pinker appeared on the Colbert Report on 10/18/11.
Personal
His father, a lawyer, first worked as a manufacturer's representative, while his mother was first a home-maker then a guidance counselor and high-school vice-principal. He has two younger siblings. His brother is a policy analyst for the
Canadian governmentThe Government of Canada, formally Her Majesty's Government, is the system whereby the federation of Canada is administered by a common authority; in Canadian English, the term can mean either the collective set of institutions or specifically the Queen-in-Council...
. His sister,
Susan PinkerSusan Pinker is a developmental psychologist who writes about social science for the daily press. She was educated at McGill University and the University of Waterloo, after which she spent 25 years in clinical practice and teaching psychology, first at Dawson College, then at McGill University...
, is a
psychologistPsychologist is a professional or academic title used by individuals who are either:* Clinical professionals who work with patients in a variety of therapeutic contexts .* Scientists conducting psychological research or teaching psychology in a college...
and writer, author of
The Sexual ParadoxThe Sexual Paradox is a book by Susan Pinker published by Scribner in 2008. Pinker is a psychologist and columnist for The Globe and Mail...
. Pinker married Nancy Etcoff in 1980 and they divorced in 1992; he married Ilavenil Subbiah in 1995 and they too divorced. His current wife is the novelist and philosopher
Rebecca GoldsteinRebecca Goldstein is an American novelist and professor of philosophy. She has written five novels, a number of short stories and essays, and biographical studies of mathematician Kurt Gödel and philosopher Baruch Spinoza....
. He has two stepdaughters: the novelist
Yael Goldstein LoveYael Goldstein Love is a novelist, editor and book critic.Her debut novel was The Passion of Tasha Darsky, originally named Overture , about the contentious relationship between mother and daughter musicians...
and the poet Danielle Blau.
He has said, "I was never religious in the theological sense... I never outgrew my conversion to atheism at 13, but at various times was a serious
cultural JewSecular Jewish culture embraces several related phenomena; above all, it is the international culture of secular communities of Jewish people, but it can also include the cultural contributions of individuals who identify as secular Jews...
." As a teenager, he says he considered himself an anarchist until he witnessed civil unrest following
a police strike in 1969The Murray-Hill riot was the culmination of 16 hours of unrest in Montreal, Quebec during a Montreal police strike.Police were motivated to strike because of difficult working conditions caused by disarming separatist-planted bombs and patrolling frequent protests...
. He has reported the result of a test of his political orientation that characterized him as "neither leftist nor rightist, more libertarian than authoritarian". Pinker confesses to having "experienced a primitive tribal stirring" after his genes were shown to trace back to the Middle East.
Theories of language and mind
Pinker is known within psychology for his theory of
language acquisitionLanguage acquisition is the process by which humans acquire the capacity to perceive, produce and use words to understand and communicate. This capacity involves the picking up of diverse capacities including syntax, phonetics, and an extensive vocabulary. This language might be vocal as with...
, his research on the syntax, morphology, and meaning of verbs, and his criticism of
connectionistConnectionism is a set of approaches in the fields of artificial intelligence, cognitive psychology, cognitive science, neuroscience and philosophy of mind, that models mental or behavioral phenomena as the emergent processes of interconnected networks of simple units...
(neural network) models of language. In
The Language InstinctThe Language Instinct is a book by Steven Pinker for a general audience, published in 1994. In it, Pinker argues that humans are born with an innate capacity for language. In addition, he deals sympathetically with Noam Chomsky's claim that all human language shows evidence of a universal grammar...
(1994) he popularized
Noam ChomskyAvram Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, and activist. He is an Institute Professor and Professor in the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT, where he has worked for over 50 years. Chomsky has been described as the "father of modern linguistics" and...
's work on language as an innate faculty of mind, with the twist that this faculty evolved by natural selection as a Darwinian adaptation for communication, although both ideas remain controversial (see below). He also defends the idea of a complex human nature which comprises many mental faculties that are adaptive (and is an ally of
Daniel DennettDaniel Clement Dennett is an American philosopher, writer and cognitive scientist whose research centers on the philosophy of mind, philosophy of science and philosophy of biology, particularly as those fields relate to evolutionary biology and cognitive science. He is currently the Co-director of...
and
Richard DawkinsClinton Richard Dawkins, FRS, FRSL , known as Richard Dawkins, is a British ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author...
in many evolutionary disputes). Another major theme in Pinker's theories is that human cognition works, in part, by combinatorial symbol-manipulation, not just associations among sensory features, as in many connectionist models.
Written work
Pinker's books,
The Language InstinctThe Language Instinct is a book by Steven Pinker for a general audience, published in 1994. In it, Pinker argues that humans are born with an innate capacity for language. In addition, he deals sympathetically with Noam Chomsky's claim that all human language shows evidence of a universal grammar...
,
How the Mind WorksHow the Mind Works is a book by Canadian-American cognitive scientist Steven Pinker, published in 1997. The book attempts to explain some of the human mind's poorly understood functions and quirks in evolutionary terms...
,
Words and RulesWords and Rules: The Ingredients of Language is a 1999 popular linguistics book by Steven Pinker on the subject of regular and irregular verbs...
,
The Blank SlateThe Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature is a best-selling 2002 book by Steven Pinker arguing against tabula rasa models of the social sciences. Pinker argues that human behavior is substantially shaped by evolutionary psychological adaptations...
, and
The Stuff of ThoughtThe Stuff of Thought: Language As a Window Into Human Nature is a New York Times best-selling book by Harvard experimental psychologist Steven Pinker published in 2007...
combine
cognitive scienceCognitive science is the interdisciplinary scientific study of mind and its processes. It examines what cognition is, what it does and how it works. It includes research on how information is processed , represented, and transformed in behaviour, nervous system or machine...
with behavioral genetics and
evolutionary psychologyEvolutionary psychology is an approach in the social and natural sciences that examines psychological traits such as memory, perception, and language from a modern evolutionary perspective. It seeks to identify which human psychological traits are evolved adaptations, that is, the functional...
.
The Language InstinctThe Language Instinct is a book by Steven Pinker for a general audience, published in 1994. In it, Pinker argues that humans are born with an innate capacity for language. In addition, he deals sympathetically with Noam Chomsky's claim that all human language shows evidence of a universal grammar...
has been criticized by
Geoffrey SampsonGeoffrey Sampson is Professor of Natural Language Computing in the Department of Informatics, University of Sussex....
in his book, The 'Language Instinct' Debate. The assumptions underlying the
nativistIn the field of psychology, nativism is the view that certain skills or abilities are 'native' or hard wired into the brain at birth. This is in contrast to empiricism, the 'blank slate' or tabula rasa view, which states that the brain has inborn capabilities for learning from the environment but...
view have also been subject to sustained criticism in
Jeffrey ElmanJeffrey L. Elman is Distinguished Professor of Cognitive Science at the University of California, San Diego. He is a well-known psycholinguist and pioneer in the field of neural networks.-Biography:...
's
Rethinking InnatenessPublished in 1996 by Jeffrey Elman, Annette Karmiloff-Smith, Elizabeth Bates, Mark Johnson, Domenico Parisi, and Kim Plunkett, Rethinking Innateness: A connectionist perspective on development is a book regarding gene/environment interaction...
: A Connectionist Perspective on Development (Neural Networks and Connectionist Modeling), which defends the connectionist approach that Pinker has criticized.
Books
- Language Learnability and Language Development (1984) ISBN 978-0674510555
- Visual Cognition (1985) ISBN 978-0262661782
- Connections and Symbols (1988) ISBN 978-0262660648
- Learnability and Cognition: The Acquisition of Argument Structure (1989) ISBN 978-0262660730
- Lexical and Conceptual Semantics (1992) ISBN 978-1557863546
- The Language Instinct
The Language Instinct is a book by Steven Pinker for a general audience, published in 1994. In it, Pinker argues that humans are born with an innate capacity for language. In addition, he deals sympathetically with Noam Chomsky's claim that all human language shows evidence of a universal grammar...
(1994) ISBN 978-0060976514
- How the Mind Works
How the Mind Works is a book by Canadian-American cognitive scientist Steven Pinker, published in 1997. The book attempts to explain some of the human mind's poorly understood functions and quirks in evolutionary terms...
(1997) ISBN 978-0393318487
- Words and Rules: The Ingredients of Language
Words and Rules: The Ingredients of Language is a 1999 popular linguistics book by Steven Pinker on the subject of regular and irregular verbs...
(1999) ISBN 978-0465072699
- The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature
The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature is a best-selling 2002 book by Steven Pinker arguing against tabula rasa models of the social sciences. Pinker argues that human behavior is substantially shaped by evolutionary psychological adaptations...
(2002) ISBN 978-0670031511
- The Best American Science and Nature Writing (editor and introduction author, 2004) ISBN 978-0618246984
- Hotheads (an extract from How the Mind Works, 2005) ISBN 978-0141022383
- The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature
The Stuff of Thought: Language As a Window Into Human Nature is a New York Times best-selling book by Harvard experimental psychologist Steven Pinker published in 2007...
(2007) ISBN 978-0670063277
- The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined
The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined is a 2011 book by Steven Pinker arguing that violence in the world, especially the western part, has declined both in the long run and in the short...
(2011) ISBN 978-0670022953
Articles and essays
External links
Debates
- The Two Steves Debate with Steven Rose
- The Science of Gender and Science Debate with Elizabeth Spelke
- Radio interview on Philosophy Talk
Philosophy Talk is a talk radio program co-hosted by John Perry and Ken Taylor, who are professors at Stanford University. The show is also available as a podcast, available for purchase. The program deals both with fundamental problems of philosophy and with the works of famous philosophers,...
Vitae
Reviews
- Article on The Language Instinct by Theodore Dalrymple
- What comes naturally, a review of The Blank Slate, Louis Menand
Louis Menand is an American writer and academic, best known for his Pulitzer Prize-winning book The Metaphysical Club , an intellectual and cultural history of late 19th and early 20th century America....
in The New YorkerThe New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
- "Meet the Flintstones" by Simon Blackburn
Simon Blackburn is a British academic philosopher known for his work in quasi-realism and his efforts to popularise philosophy. He recently retired as professor of philosophy at the University of Cambridge, but remains a distinguished research professor of philosophy at the University of North...
, a critique of The Blank SlateThe Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature is a best-selling 2002 book by Steven Pinker arguing against tabula rasa models of the social sciences. Pinker argues that human behavior is substantially shaped by evolutionary psychological adaptations...
.
- Biology vs. the Blank Slate Reason
Reason is a libertarian monthly magazine published by the Reason Foundation. The magazine has a circulation of around 60,000 and was named one of the 50 best magazines in 2003 and 2004 by the Chicago Tribune.- History :...
magazine interview with Pinker
- Evolutionary Psychology of Religion
- "The Blind Programmer", a review of How the Mind Works by Edward Oakes.
- Steven Pinker to speak at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C. on September 17, 2007