File:Steven_Pinker_in_2023.jpg · Wikimedia Commons · See Wikimedia Commons
Steven Pinker
Sign in to saveAlso known as Steven Arthur Pinker, Dr. Steven Pinker, Pinker, Steven
Canadian-American cognitive psychologist, linguist, and author, an advocate of evolutionary psychology and the computational theory of the mind
OverviewAI-generated
Steven Pinker is an American male author affiliated with Harvard University. Born in 1954, he has published 34 works, including *Enlightenment now*, *What Are You Optimistic About?*, *Ketsad poʻel ha-moaḥ*, *言語を生みだす本能*, and *人間の本性を考える*. His writing is associated with science, philosophy, and psychology, and he is recognized in the American Academy Arts Sciences collection.
Pinker’s official website is stevenpinker.com. He has been referenced by 850 other encyclopedia articles and maintains a social media following of 801,812. On Last.fm, his content has been played 24,790 times by 2,556 listeners. Among his recorded quotes are statements regarding a turning point in the history of psychology and the definition of status.
Synthesized by Vinony from 22 facts across 8 sources: Wikidata, Last.fm, Crossref, Wikiquote, MusicBrainz, Open Library, Vinony collections, Vinony graph. Generated from structured data (not the Wikipedia text) and checked against those facts — may still contain errors.
Person · Open Library
- Born
- 1954
- Works
- 34
Top works
- Ketsad poʻel ha-moaḥ
- 言語を生みだす本能
- 人間の本性を考える
- What Are You Optimistic About?
- Enlightenment now
via Open Library + Wikidata
Music · MusicBrainz
- Type
- Person
- Gender
- Male
- Origin
- United States
- Active from
- 1954-09-18
via MusicBrainz · CC0
Listeners · Last.fm
- Listeners
- 2,556
- Total plays
- 24,790
Tags
Steven Arthur Pinker (born September 18, 1954) is a prominent Canadian-American experimental psychologist, cognitive scientist, linguist and author of popular science. Harvard College Professor and Johnstone Family Professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University, Pinker is known for his wide-ranging advocacy of evolutionary psychology and the computational theory of mind. Pinker’s academic specializations are visual cognition and language development in children <a href="https:
Recent publications · Crossref
5 total works indexed
- Fast gapped-read alignment with Bowtie 2
· 2012 · cited 54,020x
- Collective dynamics of ‘small-world’ networks
· 1998 · cited 34,124x
- The Third International Consensus Definitions for Sepsis and Septic Shock (Sepsis-3)
· 2016 · cited 23,677x
- HISAT: a fast spliced aligner with low memory requirements
· 2015 · cited 22,047x
- Ultrafast and memory-efficient alignment of short DNA sequences to the human genome
· 2009 · cited 19,940x
via Crossref · CC0
Quotes
- “I predict it will come to be seen as a turning point in the history of psychology.”
- “The elegant study... is consistent with the themes of modern cognitive neuroscience. Every aspect of thought and emotion is rooted in brain structure and function, including many psychological disorders and, presumably, genius. The study confirms that the brain is a modular system comprising multiple intelligences, mostly nonverbal.”
- “The idea that thought is the same thing as language is an example of what can be called a conventional absurdity: a statement that goes against all common sense but that everyone believes because they dimly recall having heard it somewhere and because it is so pregnant with implications.”
- “The human brain is an exquisitely complex organ that evolved only once. The elephant's trunk, which can stack logs, uproot trees, pick up a dime, remove thorns, powder the elephant with dust, siphon water, serve as a snorkel, and scribble with a pencil, is another complex organ that evolved only once.”
- “Galileo wrote that 'the book of nature is written in the language of mathematics; without its help it is impossible to comprehend a single word of it.'”
- “Status is the public knowledge that you possess assets that would allow you to help others if you wished to.”
via Wikiquote · CC BY-SA
~33 min read
Encyclopedic overview
Steven Arthur Pinker (born September 18, 1954) is a Canadian cognitive psychologist, psycholinguist, popular science author, and public intellectual. He is an advocate of evolutionary psychology and the computational theory of mind. Pinker is the Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology at Harvard University.
Steven Pinker specializes in visual cognition and developmental linguistics, as well as a number of experimental topics. Pinker has written two technical books that proposed a general theory of language acquisition. In particular, his work with Alan Prince posited that children use default rules 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) posit 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 (2010) posits that violence in human societies has generally declined over time, and identifies six major trends and five historical forces of this decline. 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 book Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters (2021).
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Steven Pinker” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.