Steven Pinker (1954–) is a Canadian-American experimental psychologist and public figure. He is considered one of the most influential living figures in science and a leading expert on language and the mind.
He is known to general audiences as the author of numerous books ranging in subject from the mind and brain to human nature, violence, and language, including The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language (1994), How the Mind Works (1997), The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature (2002), and The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (2011).
Pinker is the Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology at Harvard University. Until 2003, he taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, serving also as Director of the McDonnell-Pew Center for Cognitive Neuroscience (1994–99) and earlier as Co-Director of the Center for Cognitive Science (1985–84). He frequently appears on public debate panels (2005) and discussions and writes for numerous...
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
References
Pinker, S. (1984). Language learnability and language development. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Pinker, S. (1989). Learnability and cognition: The acquisition of argument structure. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Pinker, S. (1997). How the mind works. New York: W. W. Norton.
Pinker, S. (1999). Words and rules: The ingredients of language. New York: Basic Books.
Pinker, S. (2002). The blank slate: The modern denial of human nature. New York: Viking Penguin.
Pinker, S. (2007). The language instinct: How the mind creates language. New York: Harper Perennial.
Pinker, S. (2008). The stuff of thought. London: Penguin Books.
Pinker, S. (2011). The Better Angels of Our Nature, New York, NY: Viking.
Pinker, S. (2014). The sense of style. New York: Viking Penguin.
“The Science of Gender and Science: Pinker vs. Spelke, A Debate,” Edge.org, April 22, 2005.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Section Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 Springer International Publishing AG
About this entry
Cite this entry
Kiai, A. (2018). Steven Pinker. In: Shackelford, T., Weekes-Shackelford, V. (eds) Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_632-1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_632-1
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-16999-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-16999-6
eBook Packages: Springer Reference Behavioral Science and PsychologyReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Business, Economics and Social Sciences