Steven Pinker
![Pinker in 2023](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a6/Steven_Pinker_in_2023.jpg)
Pinker is the Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology at Harvard University. He specializes in visual cognition and developmental linguistics, and his experimental topics include mental imagery, shape recognition, visual attention, regularity and irregularity in language, the neural basis of words and grammar, and childhood language development. Other experimental topics he works on are the psychology of cooperation and of communication, including emotional expression, euphemism, innuendo, and how people use "common knowledge", a term of art meaning the shared understanding in which two or more people know something, know that the other one knows, know the other one knows that they know, and so on.
Pinker has written two technical books that proposed a general theory of language acquisition and applied it to children's learning of verbs. In particular, his work with Alan Prince published in 1989 critiqued the connectionist model of how children acquire the past tense of English verbs, positing that children use default rules, such as adding ''-ed'' to make regular forms, sometimes in error, but are obliged to learn irregular forms one by one.
Pinker is the author of nine books for general audiences. ''The Language Instinct'' (1994), ''How the Mind Works'' (1997), ''Words and Rules'' (2000), ''The Blank Slate'' (2002), and ''The Stuff of Thought'' (2007) describe aspects of psycholinguistics and cognitive science, and include accounts of his own research, positing that language is an innate behavior shaped by natural selection and adapted to our communication needs. Pinker's ''The Sense of Style'' (2014) is a general language-oriented style guide. Pinker's book ''The Better Angels of Our Nature'' (2011) posits that violence in human societies has generally declined over time, and identifies six major trends and five historical forces of this decline, the most important being the humanitarian revolution brought by the Enlightenment and its associated cultivation of reason. ''Enlightenment Now'' (2018) further argues that the human condition has generally improved over recent history because of reason, science, and humanism. The nature and importance of reason is also discussed in his next book ''Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters'' (2021).
In 2004, Pinker was named in ''Time''s "The 100 Most Influential People in the World Today", and in the years 2005, 2008, 2010, and 2011 in ''Foreign Policy''s list of "Top 100 Global Thinkers". Pinker was also included in ''Prospect Magazine's'' top 10 "World Thinkers" in 2013. He has won awards from the American Psychological Association, the National Academy of Sciences, the Royal Institution, the Cognitive Neuroscience Society, and the American Humanist Association. He delivered the Gifford Lectures at the University of Edinburgh in 2013. He has served on the editorial boards of a variety of journals, and on the advisory boards of several institutions. Pinker was the chair of the Usage Panel of the ''American Heritage Dictionary'' from 2008 to 2018. Provided by Wikipedia
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Rationality : what it is, why it seems scarce, why it matters by Pinker, Steven, 1954-
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How the mind works by Pinker, Steven, 1954-
Grand Haven, Mich. : Brilliance Audio, 2011Call Number: Loading…
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Enlightenment now : the case for reason, science, humanism, and progress by Pinker, Steven, 1954-
[London] : Allen Lane, 2018Call Number: Loading…
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The blank slate : the denial of human nature in modern intellectual life by Pinker, Steven, 1954-
New York : Viking, 2002Call Number: Loading…
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Words and rules the ingredients of language by Pinker, Steven, 1954-
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Rationality what it is, why it seems scarce, why it matters by Pinker, Steven, 1954-
New York : Viking, 2021
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The better angels of our nature : why violence has declined by Pinker, Steven, 1954-
New York : Viking, 2011Call Number: Loading…
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Rationality : what it is, why it seems scarce, why it matters by Pinker, Steven, 1954-
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Language learnability and language development by Pinker, Steven, 1954-
Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1984Call Number: Loading…
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Enlightenment now : the case for reason, science, humanism, and progress by Pinker, Steven, 1954-
New York, New York : Penguin Books, 2019Call Number: Loading…
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Language learnability and language development by Pinker, Steven, 1954-
Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1984Call Number: Loading…
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The sense of style : the thinking person's guide to writing in the 21st century by Pinker, Steven, 1954-
New York : Penguin Books, 2015Call Number: Loading…
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Language, cognition, and human nature : selected articles by Pinker, Steven, 1954-
Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2013Call Number: Loading…
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How the mind works by Pinker, Steven, 1954-
New York : W.W. Norton & Co., 2009Call Number: Loading…
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Words and rules : the ingredients of language by Pinker, Steven, 1954-
New York : Basic Books, a member of the Perseus Books Group, 2015Call Number: Loading…
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The better angels of our nature why violence has declined by Pinker, Steven, 1954-
Grand Haven, Mich. : Brilliance Audio, 2011
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The better angels of our nature why violence has declined by Pinker, Steven, 1954-
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The language instinct by Pinker, Steven, 1954-
New York : HarperPerennial, 1995
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The stuff of thought [language as a window into human nature] by Pinker, Steven, 1954-
New York : Penguin Audio, 2007Call Number: Loading…
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The language instinct : how the mind creates language by Pinker, Steven, 1954-
New York : HarperPerennial ModernClassics, 2007
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