Steven Pinker
Steven Pinker
Steven Arthur "Steve" Pinkeris a Canadian-born American cognitive scientist, psychologist, linguist, and popular science author. He is Johnstone Family Professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University, and is known for his advocacy of evolutionary psychology and the computational theory of mind...
NationalityCanadian
ProfessionScientist
Date of Birth18 September 1954
CountryCanada
baby home animal
Consciousness surely does not depend on language. Babies, many animals, and patients robbed of speech by brain damage are not insensate robots; they have reactions like ours that indicate that someone's home.
common ecological family harmonies hostility ideologies modernity moral nature nostalgia primitive rhythms shared
A hostility to modernity is shared by ideologies that have nothing else in common - a nostalgia for moral clarity, small-town intimacy, family values, primitive communism, ecological sustainability, communitarian solidarity, or harmonies with the rhythms of nature.
close distant falling hear massacre taken
We know about every massacre that has taken place close to the present, but the ones in the distant past are like trees falling in the forest with no one to hear them.
best literacy phenomenon printing reforms
I think it may not be a coincidence that the rise of printing and book publication and literacy and the phenomenon of best sellers all preceded the humanitarian reforms of the Enlightenment.
appealing commerce contracts everywhere recognized
Roads, better harnesses for horses, time-keeping devices, financial instruments like a currency that was recognized everywhere in the kingdom, enforceable contracts - all of this made commerce more appealing than plunder.
changes contend cultural decline forms humanity inclined original plane social state steady technology throw universal
The decline of violence isn't a steady inclined plane from an original state of maximal and universal bloodshed. Technology, ideology, and social and cultural changes periodically throw out new forms of violence for humanity to contend with.
decades
The decline of violence is a fractal phenomenon. You can see it over millennia, over centuries, over decades and over years.
human human-nature theory
All of us have a theory about human nature.
activity result
All our behaviours are a result of neurophysiological activity in the brain.
ecosystem evolved fill niches
The way to understand how different species evolved is to think about the niches that they fill in an ecosystem - basically, how they make a living.
among both empirical hang human human-nature includes mind nature people pundits theory values works
I think that there is a quasi-religious theory of human nature that is prevalent among pundits and intellectuals, which includes both empirical assumptions about how the mind works and a set of values that people hang on those assumptions.
large number occasion people vent
It got ugly. People used this as an occasion to vent a large number of grievances.
coming humanities human-nature science seeing together
We may be seeing a coming together of the humanities and the science of human nature.
applying aspects behavior charged family mindset psychology taking
Evolutionary psychology is taking that mindset and applying it to more emotionally charged aspects of behavior, such as sexuality, violence, beauty, and family feelings.