Steven Pinker

Author profile

born

in Montreal, Canada

September 18, 1954

gender

male

website

http://pinker.wjh.harvard.edu/

genre

Science, Nonfiction, Philosophy

influences

Noam Chomsky, Peter Singer

About this author

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Steven Arthur Pinker is a prominent Canadian-American experimental psychologist, cognitive scientist, and author of popular science. Pinker is known for his wide-ranging advocacy of evolutionary psychology and the computational theory of mind. He conducts research on language and cognition, writes for publications such as the New York Times, Time, and The New Republic, and is the author of seven books, including The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, Words and Rules, The Blank Slate, and most recently, The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature.

He was born in Canada and graduated from Montreal's Dawson College in 1973. He received a bachelor's degree in experimental psychology from McGill University in 1976, and then w...more Steven Arthur Pinker is a prominent Canadian-American experimental psychologist, cognitive scientist, and author of popular science. Pinker is known for his wide-ranging advocacy of evolutionary psychology and the computational theory of mind. He conducts research on language and cognition, writes for publications such as the New York Times, Time, and The New Republic, and is the author of seven books, including The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, Words and Rules, The Blank Slate, and most recently, The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature.

He was born in Canada and graduated from Montreal's Dawson College in 1973. He received a bachelor's degree in experimental psychology from McGill University in 1976, and then went on to earn his doctorate in the same discipline at Harvard in 1979. He did research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) for a year, then became an assistant professor at Harvard and then Stanford University. 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. (Except for a one-year sabbatical at the University of California, Santa Barbara 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 and Foreign Policy's 100 top public intellectuals in 2005. He has also received honorary doctorates from the universities of Newcastle, Surrey, Tel Aviv, McGill, and the University of Tromsø, Norway. He was twice a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, in 1998 and in 2003. In January 2005, Pinker defended Lawrence Summers, President of Harvard University, whose comments about the gender gap in mathematics and science angered much of the faculty. On May 13th 2006, Pinker received the American Humanist Association's Humanist of the Year award for his contributions to public understanding of human evolution.

In 2007, he was invited on The Colbert Report and asked under pressure to sum up how the brain works in five words – Pinker answered "Brain cells fire in patterns."

Pinker was born into the English-speaking Jewish community of Montreal. 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 Jew." As a teenager, he says he considered himself an anarchist until he witnessed civil unrest following a police strike in 1969. 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. His sister, Susan Pinker, is a school psychologist 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. He has no children.

He is currently working on an upcoming book about the evolution of human morality, specifically focusing on "the historical decline of violence and its psychological roots" as stated by the author himself on the Harvard website.(less)

4 posts
Steven Pinker's Blog

Steven Pinker isn't a Goodreads Author (yet), but he does have a blog, so here are some recent posts imported from his feed.

•Michel, J.-B., Shen, Y. K., Aiden, A. P., Veres, A., Gray, M. K., The_Google_Books

•Michel, J.-B., Shen, Y. K., Aiden, A. P., Veres, A., Gray, M. K., The_Google_Books_Team, Pickett, J. P., Hoiberg, D., Clancy, D. ,Norvig, P., Orwant, J., Pinker, S., Nowak, M., & Lieberman-Aiden, E. (2011). Quantitative analysis of culture using millions of digitized books. , 331, 176-182. Science

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Steven Pinker's Books

Average rating: 4.01 · 28,437 ratings · 1,969 reviews · 25 distinct works · Similar authors

	The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature 4.04 of 5 stars 4.04 avg rating — 7,040 ratings — published 2002 — 24 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	How the Mind Works 3.99 of 5 stars 3.99 avg rating — 6,567 ratings — published 1997 — 34 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language 4.06 of 5 stars 4.06 avg rating — 6,624 ratings — published 1994 — 32 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window Into Human Nature 3.84 of 5 stars 3.84 avg rating — 3,522 ratings — published 2007 — 23 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined 4.15 of 5 stars 4.15 avg rating — 3,100 ratings — published 2011 — 23 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Words and Rules 3.83 of 5 stars 3.83 avg rating — 682 ratings — published 1999 — 8 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2004 by Steven Pinker (Editor), Tim Folger (Series Editor) 3.99 of 5 stars 3.99 avg rating — 112 ratings — published 2004 — 3 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Seven Words You Can't Say On Television 3.88 of 5 stars 3.88 avg rating — 64 ratings — published 2008 — 2 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Hotheads 3.95 of 5 stars 3.95 avg rating — 38 ratings — published 2005	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Learnability and Cognition: The Acquisition of Argument Structure by Steven Pinker, Jacques A. Mehler (Editor) 3.79 of 5 stars 3.79 avg rating — 28 ratings — published 1989 — 3 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

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Quotes by Steven Pinker

“It's natural to think that living things must be the handiwork of a designer. But it was also natural to think that the sun went around the earth. Overcoming naive impressions to figure out how things really work is one of humanity's highest callings.

(Can You Believe in God and Evolution? Time Magazine, August 7, 2005)”
― Steven Pinker

tags: religion, science, skepticism

57 people liked it

“Just as blueprints don't necessarily specify blue buildings, selfish genes don't necessarily specify selfish organisms. As we shall see, sometimes the most selfish thing a gene can do is build a selfless brain. Genes are a play within a play, not the interior monologue of the players.”
― Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works

36 people liked it

“Sex and excretion are reminders that anyone's claim to round-the-clock dignity is tenuous. The so-called rational animal has a desperate drive to pair up and moan and writhe.”
― Steven Pinker

tags: sex

35 people liked it

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Steven Pinker

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Steven Pinker's Blog

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Steven Pinker's Books

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Quotes by Steven Pinker

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Steven's Fans (471)

Steven Pinker

Author profile

4 postsSteven Pinker's Blog

combine editionsSteven Pinker's Books

Upcoming Events

Quotes by Steven Pinker

Topics Mentioning This Author

Add New
Videos

4 posts
Steven Pinker's Blog

combine editions
Steven Pinker's Books