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Steven Arthur Pinker (born September 18, 1954) is a prominent Canadian-American
Canadian-American

A Canadian-American is a person living in the United States who was born in, raised in, or possesses ancestral ties to Canada. 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, Canada, and then immigrated to...
 experimental psychologist
Experimental psychology

Experimental psychology approaches psychology as one of the natural sciences, investigates it using the experiment. The focus of experimental psychology is on discovering the underlying processes behind behavior and the specific nature of mental life....
, cognitive scientist
Cognitive science

Cognitive science may be concisely defined as the study of the nature of intelligence. It draws on multiple empirical disciplines, including psychology, philosophy, neuroscience, linguistics, anthropology, computer science, sociology and biology....
, and author of popular science
Popular science

Popular 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 formats, which can include books, televi...
. Pinker is known for his wide-ranging advocacy of evolutionary psychology
Evolutionary psychology

Evolutionary psychology attempts to explain Mind and psychology Trait theorys?such as memory, perception, or language?as adaptations, that is, as the functional products of natural selection or sexual selection....
 and the computational theory of mind
Computational theory of mind

In philosophy of mind, the computational theory of mind is the view that the human mind is best conceived as an information processing system and that thought is a form of computation....
.

Pinker’s academic specializations are visual cognition
Perception

In psychology and the cognitive sciences, perception is the process of attaining awareness or understanding of sense information. It is a task far more complex than was imagined in the 1950s and 1960s, when it was predicted that building perceiving machines would take about a decade, a goal which is still very far from fruition....
 and language development in children
Language development

Language development is a process starting early in human life, when a person begins to acquire language by learning it as it is spoken and by mimicry....
, and he is most famous for popularizing the idea that language is an "instinct" or biological adaptation
Adaptation

Adaptation is the process, which takes place under natural selection, whereby an organism becomes better suited to its habitat. Also, the term may refer to some characteristic which stands out as being especially significant in the organism's survival....
 shaped by natural selection
Natural selection

Natural selection is the process by which favorable heritable trait become more common in successive generations of a population of Reproduction organisms, and unfavorable heritable traits become less common, due to differential reproduction of genotypes....
. On this point, he opposes Noam Chomsky
Noam Chomsky

Avram Noam Chomsky is an United States linguistics, philosopher, cognitive science, political activist, author, and lecturer. He is an Institute Professor emeritus and professor emeritus of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology....
 and others who regard the human capacity for language to be the by-product of other adaptations.






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Quotations


Galileo wrote that 'the book of nature is written in the language of mathematics; without its help it is impossible to comprehend a single word of it.'.

p. 359

According to a recent study of the brains of identical and fraternal twins, differences in the amount of gray matter in the frontal lobes are not only genetically influenced but are significantly correlated with differences in intelligence.

p. 44, emphasis added





Encyclopedia


Steven Arthur Pinker (born September 18, 1954) is a prominent Canadian-American
Canadian-American

A Canadian-American is a person living in the United States who was born in, raised in, or possesses ancestral ties to Canada. 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, Canada, and then immigrated to...
 experimental psychologist
Experimental psychology

Experimental psychology approaches psychology as one of the natural sciences, investigates it using the experiment. The focus of experimental psychology is on discovering the underlying processes behind behavior and the specific nature of mental life....
, cognitive scientist
Cognitive science

Cognitive science may be concisely defined as the study of the nature of intelligence. It draws on multiple empirical disciplines, including psychology, philosophy, neuroscience, linguistics, anthropology, computer science, sociology and biology....
, and author of popular science
Popular science

Popular 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 formats, which can include books, televi...
. Pinker is known for his wide-ranging advocacy of evolutionary psychology
Evolutionary psychology

Evolutionary psychology attempts to explain Mind and psychology Trait theorys?such as memory, perception, or language?as adaptations, that is, as the functional products of natural selection or sexual selection....
 and the computational theory of mind
Computational theory of mind

In philosophy of mind, the computational theory of mind is the view that the human mind is best conceived as an information processing system and that thought is a form of computation....
.

Pinker’s academic specializations are visual cognition
Perception

In psychology and the cognitive sciences, perception is the process of attaining awareness or understanding of sense information. It is a task far more complex than was imagined in the 1950s and 1960s, when it was predicted that building perceiving machines would take about a decade, a goal which is still very far from fruition....
 and language development in children
Language development

Language development is a process starting early in human life, when a person begins to acquire language by learning it as it is spoken and by mimicry....
, and he is most famous for popularizing the idea that language is an "instinct" or biological adaptation
Adaptation

Adaptation is the process, which takes place under natural selection, whereby an organism becomes better suited to its habitat. Also, the term may refer to some characteristic which stands out as being especially significant in the organism's survival....
 shaped by natural selection
Natural selection

Natural selection is the process by which favorable heritable trait become more common in successive generations of a population of Reproduction organisms, and unfavorable heritable traits become less common, due to differential reproduction of genotypes....
. On this point, he opposes Noam Chomsky
Noam Chomsky

Avram Noam Chomsky is an United States linguistics, philosopher, cognitive science, political activist, author, and lecturer. He is an Institute Professor emeritus and professor emeritus of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology....
 and others who regard the human capacity for language to be the by-product of other adaptations. He is the author of five books for a general audience, which include The Language Instinct
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....
 (1994), How the Mind Works
How the Mind Works

How the Mind Works is a book by Canadian-American cognitive science 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 Rules
Words and Rules

Words and Rules: The Ingredients of Language is a 1999 popular linguistics book by Steven Pinker on the subject of regular verb and irregular verbs....
 (2000), The Blank Slate
The Blank Slate

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....
 (2002), and The Stuff of Thought
The Stuff of Thought

The Stuff of Thought: Language As a Window Into Human Nature is a New York Times best-selling book by Harvard University Experimental psychology Steven Pinker published in 2007....
 (2007). Pinker's books have won numerous awards and been New York Times
The New York Times

The New York Times is an American daily newspaper published in New York City. The largest metropolitan newspaper in the United States, "The Gray Lady"?named for its staid appearance and style?is regarded as a national newspaper of record....
 best-sellers.

Biography


Career

Pinker was born in Canada
Canada

Canada is a country occupying most of northern North America, extending from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west and northward into the Arctic Ocean....
 and graduated from Montreal
Montreal

Montreal, or Montr?al, is the largest city in the Provinces and territories of Canada of Quebec and the List of largest cities and second largest cities by country List of the 100 largest municipalities in Canada by population....
's Dawson College
Dawson College

Dawson College was the first English CEGEP and is located in Westmount, Quebec, 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 1973. He received a bachelor's degree
Bachelor's degree

A bachelor's degree is usually an undergraduate academic degree awarded for a course or major that generally lasts for three, four, or in some cases and countries, five or six years....
 in experimental psychology
Experimental psychology

Experimental psychology approaches psychology as one of the natural sciences, investigates it using the experiment. The focus of experimental psychology is on discovering the underlying processes behind behavior and the specific nature of mental life....
 from McGill University
McGill University

McGill University is a Public university#Canada located in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It bears the name of James McGill, a prominent Montreal merchant from Scotland, whose bequest formed the beginning of the university....
 in 1976, and then went on to earn his doctorate
Doctor of Philosophy

Doctor of Philosophy, abbreviated Ph.D. or PhD for the Latin , meaning "teacher of philosophy", is an postgraduate academic degree awarded by University....
 in the same discipline at Harvard
Harvard University

Harvard University is a private university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Massachusetts, United States, and a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1636 by the colonial Massachusetts legislature, Harvard is the Colonial Colleges institution of higher learning in the United States....
 in 1979. He did research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private university research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Massachusetts, United States....
 (MIT) for a year, then became an assistant professor at Harvard and then Stanford University
Stanford University

Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private university research university located in Stanford, California, California, United States....
. 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 Neuroscience
Cognitive neuroscience

Cognitive neuroscience is an academic field concerned with the scientific study of biological substrate underlying cognition, with a specific focus on the neural substrates of mental processes and their behavioral manifestations....
. (Except for a one-year sabbatical at the University of California, Santa Barbara
University of California, Santa Barbara

The University of California, Santa Barbara, commonly known as UCSB or UC Santa Barbara, is a public university research university and one of the 10 general campuses of the University of California system....
 in 1995-6.) As of 2008, he is the Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology at Harvard.

Pinker was named one of Time Magazine's 100 most influential people in the world in 2004 and one of Prospect
Prospect (magazine)

Prospect is a monthly United Kingdom general interest magazine, specialising in politics and news. Frequent topics include British, European, and United States politics, society issues, art, literature, Film, science, the media, history, philosophy, and psychology....
 and Foreign Policys 100 top public intellectuals in 2005. He has also received honorary doctorates from the universities of Newcastle, Surrey
University of Surrey

The University of Surrey is a university located within the county town of Guildford, Surrey in the South East England of England. It received its Royal Charter on 9 September 1966, and was previously situated near Battersea Park in south-west London....
, Tel Aviv
Tel Aviv University

Tel Aviv University is a large, public university, located in Tel Aviv, Israel. As of 2006, the Tel Aviv University has a student population of 29,000....
, McGill
McGill University

McGill University is a Public university#Canada located in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It bears the name of James McGill, a prominent Montreal merchant from Scotland, whose bequest formed the beginning of the university....
, and the University of Tromsø
University of Tromsø

The University of Troms? is the world's northernmost university. Located in the city of Troms?, Norway, it was established in 1968, and opened in 1972....
, Norway. He was twice a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize
Pulitzer Prize

The Pulitzer Prize is an United States award regarded as the highest national honor in newspaper journalism, literary achievements and musical composition....
, in 1998 and in 2003.

In January 2005, Pinker defended Lawrence Summers
Lawrence Summers

Lawrence Henry "Larry" Summers is an American economist and the head of the White House's National Economic Council for President Barack Obama....
, President of Harvard University, whose comments about the gender gap
Gender gap

Gender gap may refer to:*Gender differences in a general psycho-social context;*Income disparity of females vs. males in a purely economic context....
 in mathematics and science angered much of the faculty.

On May 13th 2006, Pinker received the American Humanist Association
American Humanist Association

The American Humanist Association is an educational organization in the United States that advances Humanism. It embraces secular, religious, and other manifestations of Humanist philosophy....
's Humanist of the Year award for his contributions to public understanding of human evolution.

In 2007, he was invited on The Colbert Report
The Colbert Report

The Colbert Report is a Peabody Award- and Emmy Award-winning American news satire television program that airs from 11:30 p.m. to 12:00 midnight Eastern Time Zone each Monday through Thursday on Comedy Central in the United States and on both The Comedy Network and CTV Television Network in Canada....
 and asked under pressure to sum up how the brain works in five words – Pinker answered "Brain cells fire in patterns." Following his 2007 visit to The Colbert Report
The Colbert Report

The Colbert Report is a Peabody Award- and Emmy Award-winning American news satire television program that airs from 11:30 p.m. to 12:00 midnight Eastern Time Zone each Monday through Thursday on Comedy Central in the United States and on both The Comedy Network and CTV Television Network in Canada....
, Pinker returned in February 2009 to another interview with Stephen in which the two discussed the mapping of the Human Genome
Human genome

The human genome is the genome of Homo sapiens, which is stored on 23 chromosome pairs. Twenty-two of these are autosome, while the remaining pair is XY sex-determination system....
, and the now available means to map an individual's risks and predispositions to certain genetic conditions, diseases, etc. by using modern genetic testing
Genetic testing

Genetic testing allows the Genetics diagnosis of vulnerabilities to inherit diseases, and can also be used to determine a person's ancestry. Normally, every person carries two copies of every gene, one inherited from their mother, one inherited from their father....
 techniques. Pinker also went on to admit he had published the results of his own personal genetic tests for online availability.

Personal

Pinker was born into the English-speaking Jew
Jew

A Jew is a member of the Jewish people, an ethnoreligious group that traces its ancestry to the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East....
ish community of Montreal
Montreal

Montreal, or Montr?al, is the largest city in the Provinces and territories of Canada of Quebec and the List of largest cities and second largest cities by country List of the 100 largest municipalities in Canada by population....
. He has said, "I was never religious in the theological sense... I never outgrew my conversion to atheism
Atheism

Atheism is the absence or rejection of belief in deity, or the explicit view that Existence of God.Many list of atheists are Skepticism of all supernatural beings and cite a lack of empiricism evidence for the existence of deities....
 at 13, but at various times was a serious cultural Jew
Secular Jewish culture

Secular Jewish culture embraces several related phenomena; above all, it is the culture of Secularity communities of Jewish people, but it can also include the cultural contributions of individuals who identify as secular Jews, or even those of religious Jews working in cultural areas not generally considered to be connected to religion....
." As a teenager, he says he considered himself an anarchist
Anarchism

Anarchism is a political philosophy encompassing anarchist schools of thought which consider the state to be unnecessary, harmful, and/or undesirable....
 until he witnessed civil unrest following a police strike in 1969. In testing for political orientation, he has been found "neither leftist nor rightist, more libertarian than authoritarian." His father, a trained lawyer, first worked as a traveling salesman, 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 government
Government of Canada

Canada is a constitutional monarchy. The powers and structure of the federal government are set out in the Constitution of Canada, which includes the written part, the decisions of courts, and unwritten conventions developed over time....
. His sister, Susan Pinker, is a school psychologist
Psychologist

"Psychologist" is an academic, occupational or professional title describing individuals who are either: * social scientists conducting research and/or teaching psychology in a college or university;...
 and writer, author of The Sexual Paradox. Pinker married Nancy Etcoff in 1980 and they divorced 1992; he married Ilavenil Subbiah in 1995 and they too divorced. His current wife is the novelist and philosopher Rebecca Goldstein
Rebecca Goldstein

Rebecca Goldstein is an United States novelist and professor of philosophy. She has written five novels, a number of short stories and essays, and biographical studies of mathematician Kurt G?del and philosopher Baruch Spinoza....
. He has no children.

Theories of language and mind

Pinker is most famous for his work — popularized in The Language Instinct
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....
 (1994) — on how children acquire language
Language acquisition

Language acquisition is the study of the processes through which learners acquire language. By itself, language acquisition refers to first language acquisition, which studies infants' acquisition of their native language, whereas second language acquisition deals with acquisition of additional languages in both children and adults....
, and for his popularization of Noam Chomsky
Noam Chomsky

Avram Noam Chomsky is an United States linguistics, philosopher, cognitive science, political activist, author, and lecturer. He is an Institute Professor emeritus and professor emeritus of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology....
's work on language as an innate faculty of mind. Pinker has suggested an evolution
Evolution

In biology, evolution is change in the heritability trait of a population of organisms from one generation to the next. These changes are caused by a combination of three main processes: variation, reproduction, and selection....
ary mental module for language, although this idea remains controversial (see below). The Language Instinct is a book where Pinker argues that humans are born with an innate capacity for language. In addition, he deals sympathetically with the claim that all human language shows evidence of a universal grammar. Additionally Pinker argues that many other human mental faculties are adaptive (and is an ally of Daniel Dennett
Daniel Dennett

Daniel Clement Dennett is a prominent United States Philosophy whose research centers on philosophy of mind, philosophy of science and philosophy of biology, particularly as those fields relate to evolutionary biology and cognitive science....
 and Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins

Clinton Richard Dawkins, Royal Society#Fellowship, Royal Society of Literature is a United Kingdom ethology, evolutionary biology and popular science author....
 in many evolutionary disputes).

Written work

Pinker's books, How the Mind Works
How the Mind Works

How the Mind Works is a book by Canadian-American cognitive science Steven Pinker, published in 1997. The book attempts to explain some of the human mind's poorly understood functions and quirks in evolutionary terms....
 and The Blank Slate
The Blank Slate

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....
, are from the evolutionary psychology
Evolutionary psychology

Evolutionary psychology attempts to explain Mind and psychology Trait theorys?such as memory, perception, or language?as adaptations, that is, as the functional products of natural selection or sexual selection....
 tradition, which views the mind as a kind of Swiss Army knife
Swiss Army knife

A Swiss Army knife , is a brand of multi-function pocket knife or multi-tool. Generally speaking, a Military of Switzerland knife has a blade as well as various tools, such as screwdrivers and can openers....
 equipped with a set of specialized tools (or modules) to deal with problems faced by our Pleistocene
Pleistocene

The Pleistocene is the epoch from 1.8 million to 10,000 years Before Present covering the world's recent period of repeated glaciations. The name pleistocene is derived from the Greek and ....
 ancestors. Pinker and other evolutionary psychologists
List of evolutionary psychologists

The following is a list of evolutionary psychology or prominent contributors to the field of evolutionary psychology....
 believe that these tools evolved by natural selection
Natural selection

Natural selection is the process by which favorable heritable trait become more common in successive generations of a population of Reproduction organisms, and unfavorable heritable traits become less common, due to differential reproduction of genotypes....
, just like other body parts. The field of evolutionary psychology
Evolutionary psychology

Evolutionary psychology attempts to explain Mind and psychology Trait theorys?such as memory, perception, or language?as adaptations, that is, as the functional products of natural selection or sexual selection....
 was pioneered by E. O. Wilson
E. O. Wilson

Edward Osborne Wilson is an United States biologist, researcher , theorist , naturalist and author. His biological specialty is myrmecology, a branch of entomology....
, Leda Cosmides
Leda Cosmides

Leda Cosmides, is an American psychologist, who, together with anthropologist husband John Tooby, helped pioneer the field of evolutionary psychology....
 and John Tooby
John Tooby

John Tooby is an United States anthropologist, who, together with psychologist wife Leda Cosmides, helped pioneer the field of evolutionary psychology....
. The Language Instinct
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....
 has been criticized by Geoffrey Sampson
Geoffrey Sampson

Geoffrey Sampson is Professor of Natural Language Computing in the Department of Informatics, University of Sussex.He produces annotation standards for compiling corpus linguistics of ordinary usage of the English language....
 in his book, The 'Language Instinct' Debate. The assumptions underlying the nativist
Psychological nativism

In the field of psychology, nativism is the view that certain skills or abilities are 'native' or hard wired into the brain at Childbirth. 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 does not contain content such as innate be...
 view have also been subject to sustained criticism in Jeffrey Elman
Jeffrey Elman

Jeffrey L. Elman is Distinguished Professor of Cognitive science at the Ucsd. He is a well-known psycholinguistics and pioneer in the field of neural networks....
's Rethinking Innateness
Rethinking Innateness

Published in 1996 by Jeffrey Elman, Annette Karmiloff-Smith, Elizabeth Bates, Mark H. Johnson , Domenico Parisi, and Kim Plunkett, Rethinking Innateness...
: A Connectionist Perspective on Development (Neural Networks and Connectionist Modeling).

Selected publications


Books


  • Language Learnability and Language Development (1984)
  • Visual Cognition (1985)
  • Connections and Symbols (1988)
  • Learnability and Cognition: The Acquisition of Argument Structure (1989)
  • Lexical and Conceptual Semantics (1992)
  • The Language Instinct
    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....
     (1994)
  • How the Mind Works
    How the Mind Works

    How the Mind Works is a book by Canadian-American cognitive science 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 Rules: The Ingredients of Language
    Words and Rules

    Words and Rules: The Ingredients of Language is a 1999 popular linguistics book by Steven Pinker on the subject of regular verb and irregular verbs....
     (1999)
  • The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature
    The Blank Slate

    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....
     (2002)
  • The Best American Science and Nature Writing (editor and introduction author, 2004)
  • Hotheads (an extract from How the Mind Works, 2005)
  • The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature
    The Stuff of Thought

    The Stuff of Thought: Language As a Window Into Human Nature is a New York Times best-selling book by Harvard University Experimental psychology Steven Pinker published in 2007....
     (2007)


Articles and essays

  • Pinker, S. (1991) Rules of Language. Science, 253, 530–535.
  • Ullman, M., Corkin, S., Coppola, M., Hickok, G., Growdon, J. H., Koroshetz, W. J., & Pinker, S. (1997) A neural dissociation within language: Evidence that the mental dictionary is part of declarative memory, and that grammatical rules are processed by the procedural system. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 9, 289–299.
  • Pinker, S. (2003) Language as an adaptation to the cognitive niche. In M. Christiansen & S. Kirby (Eds.), Language evolution: States of the Art. New York: Oxford University Press.
  • Pinker, S. (2005) So How Does the Mind Work? Mind and Language, 20(1), 1–24.
  • Jackendoff, R. & Pinker, S. (2005) The nature of the language faculty and its implications for evolution of language (Reply to Fitch, Hauser, & Chomsky) Cognition, 97(2), 211–225.
  • S. Pinker (2007), "In Defense of Dangerous Ideas" (Chicago Sun-Times, July 15, 2007, http://richarddawkins.net/article,1449,In-defense-of-dangerous-ideas,Steven-Pinker)
  • a great number of Pinker's articles in http://pinker.wjh.harvard.edu/articles/
  • S. Pinker (2008), "Truth in the Balance" (Greater Good Magazine, Fall 2008, http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/greatergood/2008fall/Pinker452.php)


External links

  • video interview with Steven Pinker, 3 hrs., 11-2-2008]
  • TED
    TED (conference)

    TED is an annual conference that defines its mission as "ideas worth spreading". The lectures, also called TED Talks, cover a broad set of topics including science, arts and design, politics, culture, business, global issues, technology and development, and entertainment....
    , July, 2005
  • TED, March, 2007
  • The New York Times
    The New York Times

    The New York Times is an American daily newspaper published in New York City. The largest metropolitan newspaper in the United States, "The Gray Lady"?named for its staid appearance and style?is regarded as a national newspaper of record....
    , January 13, 2008
  • Appearance on WMBR's radio show December 15, 2004
  • Appearance on WMBR's radio show October 29, 2003
  • Appearance on WMBR's radio show October 10, 2002

Debates

  • Debate with Steven Rose
  • Debate with Elizabeth Spelke


Vitae

  • . Extensive lists of audio and video files
  • The Guardian
    The Guardian

    Sorry, no overview for this topic
     Profile, November 6, 1999
  • - The Guardian
    The Guardian

    Sorry, no overview for this topic
     profile by Oliver Burkeman, September 22, 2007.


Reviews

  • by Theodore Dalrymple
  • , originally published in The New Yorker
    The New Yorker

    The New Yorker is an United States magazine that publishes reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Starting as a weekly in the mid-1920s, the magazine is now published 47 times per year, with five of these issues covering two-week spans....
     magazine
  • by Simon Blackburn
    Simon Blackburn

    Simon Blackburn is a British academic philosopher known for his efforts to popularise philosophy. He attended Clifton College and went on to receive his bachelor's degree in Moral Sciences in 1965 from Trinity College, Cambridge....
    , a critique of The Blank Slate
    The Blank Slate

    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....
    .
  • Reason
    Reason (magazine)

    Reason is a libertarianism monthly magazine from the Reason Foundation.Reason was founded in 1968 by Lanny Friedlander as a more-or-less monthly Mimeograph machine publication....
     magazine interview with Pinker
  • , a review of How the Mind Works by Edward Oakes.