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
art world body
There is no society ever discovered in the remotest corner of the world that has not had something that we would consider the arts. Visual arts - decoration of surfaces and bodies - appears to be a human universal.
cartoon would-be accurate
If the cartoon were completely accurate, though, life would be a cacophany of spoinks.
moon ciphers sun
An enormous amount of scientific language is metaphorical. We talk about a genetic code, where code originally meant a cipher; we talk about the solar system model of the atom as though the atom were like a sun and moon and planets.
self empathy violence
Human nature is complex. Even if we do have inclinations toward violence, we also have inclination to empathy, to cooperation, to self-control.
commitment equal-treatment issues
Equity feminism is a moral doctrine about equal treatment that makes no commitments regarding open empirical issues in psychology or biology.
genes genome entirety
Heritability pertains to the entirety of the genome, not to a single gene.
radical thinker
I don't consider myself to be that radical a thinker.
mysterious beneath-the-surface surface
I get drawn in when I feel there is something deep and mysterious going on beneath the surface of something.
writing hockey ice
I like ice hockey. No one is ever going to ask me to write about that as a metaphor for life.
atheism serious jew
I never outgrew my conversion to atheism at 13, but at various times was a serious cultural Jew.
book writing years
I teach classes 28 weeks of the year, but the rest of the time I do research and write books.
world language human-nature
Language is a window into human nature, but it is also a fistula, an open wound through which we're exposed to an infectious world.
mavens language peeves
Language mavens commonly confuse their own peeves with a worsening of the language.
promise benefits dawn
Like the early days of the Internet, the dawn of personal genomics promises benefits and pitfalls that no one can foresee.