Pinker, Steven 1954- (Steven A. Pinker, Steven Arthur Pinker)

PERSONAL:

Born September 18, 1954, in Montreal, Quebec, Canada; immigrated to the United States, 1976, naturalized citizen, 1980; son of Harry (in sales) and Roslyn (a homemaker, high school guidance counselor, and school vice principal) Pinker; married Ilavenil Subbiah, December 30, 1995 (divorced); partner of Rebecca Newberger Goldstein. Education: Dawson College, diploma of college studies, 1971; McGill University, B.A., 1976; Harvard University, Ph.D., 1979. Religion: Jewish.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Boston and Truro, MA. Office—Harvard University, Department of Psychology, William James Hall 970, 33 Kirkland St., Cambridge, MA 02138; fax: 617-495-3278. Agent—John Brockman, Brockman, Inc., 5 E. 59th St., New York, NY 10022. E-mail—pinker@wjh.harvard.edu.

CAREER:

Writer, educator, lecturer, public speaker, cognitive scientist, and experimental psychologist. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), postdoctoral fellow, 1979-80, assistant professor, 1982-85, associate professor, 1985-89, professor of psychology, 1989-2000, Peter de Florez Professor, 2000-03, McDonnell-Pew Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, codirector, 1985-94, director, 1994-99, MacVicar faculty fellow, 2000; Harvard University, assistant professor, 1980-81, Johnstone Professor of Psychology, 2003—; Stanford University, assistant professor, 1981-82; University of California Santa Barbara, professor, 1995-96. Brandeis University, visiting scholar, 1987-88; Harvard University, visiting scholar, 1987-88; Medical Research Council, Cognitive Development Unit, London, England, visiting scholar, 1988; University of California Santa Barbara, visiting scholar, 1995-96; University of Auckland, New Zealand, honorary visiting professor, 2001-07; Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center/Harvard Medical School, visiting professor, 2007. Neurosciences Research Program, fellow, 1995-2002; New England Institute for Cognitive Science and Evolutionary Psychology, distinguished fellow, 2001-04. Guest on television programs and documentaries.

MEMBER:

American Psychological Association (fellow, 1992—; fellow, division of experimental psychology, 1991—), American Psychological Society (fellow, 1990—), American Association or the Advancement of Science (fellow, 1987—), American Academy of Arts and Sciences (fellow, 1998—), Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (PSICOP; fellow, 2000—), Psychonomic Society, Cognitive Science Society, Linguistics Society of America (fellow, 2007—).

AWARDS, HONORS:

Fellowships, Frank Knox Foundation, 1976-78, and NSERC Canada, 1976-79; grants, National Science Foundation, 1980-83, 1982-84, and 1991-94, and NIH, 1983-2005; distinguished early career award, American Psychological Association, 1984; Boyd McCandless Award, American Psychological Association, 1986; Troland Research Award, National Academy of Science, 1993; Editor's choice, ten best books of 1994, New York Times Book Review; Public Interest Award, Linguistics Society of America, 1997, William James Book Prize, American Psychological Association, all for The Language Instinct; Book Award for Science and Technology, Los Angeles Times, 1997, and Pulitzer Prize finalist in nonfiction, 1998, Good Book Guide Award, Best Science Book of 1998, National Book Critics' Circle Award finalist, 1998, William James Book Prize, American Psychological Association, 1999, all for How the Mind Works; Golden Plate Award, American Academy of Achievement, 1999; School of Science Teaching Prize for Excellence in Undergraduate Education, MIT, 2001; Humanist Laureate, International Academy of Humanism, 2001; Pulitzer Prize finalist in nonfiction, 2003, William James Book Prize, American Psychological Association, 2003, Eleanor Maccoby Book Award, American Psychological Association, 2003, and Kistler Book Award, Foundation for the Future, 2005, all for The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature; named among "100 Most Influential People in the World Today," Time, 2004; named among "World's Top 100 Public Intellectuals," Prospect and Foreign Policy, 2005; Sidney Hook Award, best essays of 2005, for "The Science of Gender and Science," with Elizabeth Spelke; named among "Harvard 100: The Most Influential Alumni," 02138 Magazine, 2006; Humanist of the Year, American Humanist Association, 2006; Communication and Leadership Award, Toastmasters International (District 31), 2006; Herbert Simon Fellow, American Academy of Political and Social Science, 2006—; Henry Dale Prize, Royal Institute of Great Britain. Recipient of numerous grants and related awards from organizations such as the National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Mental Health, American Council of Learned Societies, and the National Science Foundation. Recipient of honorary degrees from several universities.

WRITINGS:

Language Learnability and Language Development, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA), 1984, 2nd edition, 1996.

(Editor) Visual Cognition, MIT Press (Cambridge, MA), 1985.

(Editor, with Jacques Mehler) Connections and Symbols, MIT Press (Cambridge, MA), 1988.

Learnability and Cognition: The Acquisition of Argument Structure, MIT Press (Cambridge, MA), 1989.

(Editor, with Beth Levin) Lexical and Conceptual Semantics, Blackwell (Cambridge, MA), 1992.

The Language Instinct, Morrow (New York, NY), 1994.

How the Mind Works, Norton (New York, NY), 1997.

Words and Rules: The Ingredients of Language, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1999.

The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature, Viking (New York, NY), 2002.

The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature, Viking (New York, NY), 2007.

Contributor to books, including Children's Language, volume 5, edited by K. Nelson, Erlbaum (Hillsdale, NJ), 1984; Foundations of Cognitive Science, edited by M.I. Posner, MIT Press (Cambridge, MA), 1989; Overregularization in Language Acquisition, University of Chicago Press (Chicago, IL), 1992; Cognitive Neurosciences, edited by M.S. Gazzaniga, MIT Press (Cambridge, MA), 1994; Origins of the Human Brain, edited by J.-P. Changeux and J. Chavaillon, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1995; Language Evolution: States of the Art, edited by M. Christiansen and S. Kirby, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 2003; Science and Religion: Are They Compatible?, edited by P. Kurtz, Prometheus Books (Amherst, NY), 2003; What Scientists Think, edited by J. Stangroom, Routledge (New York, NY), 2005; and Intelligent Thought, edited by J. Brockman, Vintage (New York, NY), 2006.

Contributor to newspapers, periodicals, and journals, including Time, Slate, Forbes, New Republic, Animal Learning and Behavior, Canadian Journal of Psychology, Journal of Mental Imagery, Journal of Experimental Psychology, Journal of Child Language, Child Development, Memory and Cognition, Papers and Reports in Child Language, Cognition, Cognitive Psychology, Cognitive Science, Nature, Trends in Cognitive Science, Metascience, Times Higher Education Supplement, Natural History, Discover, Independent on Sunday, Times Literary Supplement, Boston Globe, Chicago Sun-Times, Times (London, England), and the New York Times.

Member of numerous editorial and publication advisory boards, prize committees, organization advisory boards, and other panels, boards, organizations, and committees.

English Linguistics, member of advisory editorial board, 2003—; Intercultural Pragmatics, member of advisory editorial board, 2003—; MIT Press, member of academic editorial board, 1996-2001; Trends in Cognitive Science, member of advisory editorial board, 2000—; Words, member of editorial advisory board, 2002—; Seed magazine, contributing editor, 2004—.

Member of editorial board of journals, including Daedalus, Canadian Psychology, Evolutional Psychology, Journal of Cognition and Culture, Theoria et Historia Scientiarium, Evolution and Human Behavior, Cognitive Science, Language Acquisition, Journal of Child Language, and the International Journal of Bilingualism.

Ad hoc reviewer for academic journals and publishers.

SIDELIGHTS:

Steven Pinker is an experimental psychologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he serves as Johnstone Professor of Psychology. He specializes in psycholinguistics, particularly language development in children. In addition to editing collections of scientific papers on language acquisition, Pinker has written scholarly publications on the topic, including Language Learnability and Language Development and Learnability and Cognition: The Acquisition of Argument Structure. For the educated layperson, Pinker authored The Language Instinct, an integrated synopsis of his work to date.

In The Language Instinct, Pinker describes several theories about language acquisition in children. These range from the position of the innatists, who believe that children are somehow "programmed" genetically to learn language, to that of the social interactionists, who argue that children learn language primarily by interacting with their environments. Pinker describes where he stands between the two camps. While he acknowledges the influence and importance of the environment, Pinker maintains that Darwinian natural selection—the genetic factor—is responsible for the human's ability to learn language. He also refutes the suggestion that apes are able to learn language via sign language by asserting that while apes have the vocal apparatus to speak, they do not have the brain power to use language. Pinker also suggests that writers like William Safire, who are known for their extensive commentary on contemporary language use, are ill-informed about the true facts surrounding the acquisition and use of language. Calling The Language Instinct "a brilliant, witty and altogether satisfying book," Michael D. Coe of the New York Times Book Review added: "Pinker has that facility, so rare among scientists, of making the most difficult material … accessible to the average reader. Most important, he never talks down to the reader."

Pinker presents a careful consideration of the function of the human mind in How the Mind Works. In this work, Pinker is also concerned with the evolution of the mind and how it developed to perform the way it does. He draws upon concepts from a variety of scientific and academic disciplines, including evolutional biology, artificial intelligence, and cognitive science, and presents information on what current research and theory says about the mind. He "reverse-engineers" the mind's function, beginning with a characteristic and then painstakingly assessing what evolutionary advantage or benefit that characteristic would represent. Pinker advances the notion of functional modules in the brain; the brain, he suggests, is not one discrete organ but is instead constructed of many distinct organs. Rather than one central core of intellectual ability, separate structures exist that originate and regulate thought, emotion, perception, instinct, and all manner of psychological and physical abilities. All of these modules operating and interacting in tandem result in cognizance, intelligence, and the ability to think. The brain is fundamentally a computational machine, and intelligence results from the total of vast amounts of computation performed by the brain. At its base, Pinker's theory favors Darwinian theories of evolution for explaining the development and function of the human mind and associated behavior, and suggests that all of these functional modules have been created and fine-tuned by millions of years of evolutionary selection.

"The book is a splendid account of what the mind does in the language of modern neuroscience," commented New Statesman reviewer John Maddox. Pinker "has a gift for making enormously complicated mechanisms—and human foibles—accessible," remarked a Publishers Weekly contributor. Library Journal critic Laurie Bartolini called the book "extraordinarily ambitious, often complex, occasionally tedious, frequently entertaining, and consistently challenging." Daniel N. Robinson, writing in the National Review, named it a "good purchase for anyone wanting an up-to-date account of how leading thinkers in the ‘cognitive and brain sciences’ approach the mind, and the best methods by which to determine ‘how it works.’"

In Words and Rules: The Ingredients of Language, Pinker explores the basic nature of language through a careful consideration of regular and irregular verbs. He "examines irregularities, especially irregular verbs and plurals, from the points of view of biology, child development, psychology, philology, philosophy, and linguistics," noted Paul O. Williams in the Christian Science Monitor. He explores how children learn the differences between regular and irregular verbs, how they learn to add -ed to form the past tense, and how they come to recognize irregulars—"thought," not "thinked," for example. Pinker notes two processes at work that allows this facet of language to be learned. The first involves innate rules that exist in the human mind that allow us to arrange and make sense of language. This type of "deep structure" was first proposed by linguist Noam Chomsky. It is considered part of the inborn capacity for language that lets humans create a vast number of expressions from a limited number of words and rules. The second process involves simply learning and memorizing the irregular verb forms that are contrary to the language rules already in the brain. Pinker also looks at other aspects of language learning and usage, including how regular and irregular verbs are handled in languages other than English; how neurological disorders interfere with language use; and how current theoretical models can be applied to concepts of language.

"As always, Pinker entertains with humor, wit and limpid writing," commented Evangeline A. Wheeler in American Scientist. "The numerous lively literary and historical offerings liberally sprinkled throughout the text have the effect of balancing the pedantic lists of nouns and verbs with their multiple permutations," Wheeler continued. Throughout the book, Pinker "summarizes current research and competing theoretical models in an extremely readable and enjoyable style," commented Paul A. D'Alessandro in a Library Journal review. Wheeler concluded that the book is a "highly informative read for anyone who wonders what irregular verbs have to tell us about the structure of the mind's language system." A Publishers Weekly critic called the book "required reading for anyone interested in cognition and language."

The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature is "all about human nature—its validation, characterization, and neurological basis, along with all its wider moral, political, and social baggage," explained Susan Greenfield in the Spectator. In the book, Pinker takes a new look at the classic nature-nurture debate, the longstanding argument over whether unavoidable, hardwired biological factors or more controllable environmental conditions are more important in determining a person's attitudes, personality, abilities, and other characteristics. In Pinker's assessment, neither genetics nor environmental conditions are solely responsible for determining a person's behavior; instead, individuals are created by a combination of both innate human nature and the conditions of upbringing and environment. Pinker's arguments refute some long-held theories of personal development. He argues against the titular Blank Slate, or "tabula rasa," which posits that children are born with undeveloped minds and that their attitudes, personalities, and intellect are gradually constructed as their experiences are "written" on the blank slate of their psyches. He also criticizes other encompassing theories such as the Noble Savage, which suggests that humans are born fundamentally good and are corrupted by experiences in a bad society, and the Ghost in the Machine, a notion that proposes the existence of an immaterial mind, conscious will, or soul in humans. For Pinker, both nature and nurture play an important role in creating a complete human being, and the innate biological characteristics of human nature are not only real, but critically important. In people, "mental differences can be dramatic, but they all depend on a vast base of mental similarity (from ability to talk and sense to a profound common susceptibility to fundamental emotions such as surprise, anger, disgust, joy and fear)," observed Financial Times reviewer Galen Strawson. "Pinker's book contains an overwhelming argument against the theory that the human mind is a social construct," commented John Gray in New Statesman. "But it is far from being a mere diatribe," Gray continued. "It is also a wide-ranging and unfailingly sensible discussion of the ethical and political implications of accepting that we have a common nature."

"It will be a rare reader who agrees with everything in this book," noted Houston Chronicle reviewer Bruce Ramsay. "But it is an intelligent book that says what it means and thinks about what it is saying," Ramsay continued. "It swoops through evolutionary theory to psychology, linguistics, politics and philosophy, sometimes in wide loops of speculation, sometimes in tight curls of logic." A Publishers Weekly contributor called the book "persuasive and illuminating," while a Kirkus Reviews critic found it to be a "rich, sophisticated argument that may leave pious souls a little uneasy."

In The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature, Pinker "investigates what the words we use tell us about the way we think," noted a Publishers Weekly reviewer. He explores how the mind has the ability to conceive of similar situations in very different ways: drinking from a glass of water is not the same as drinking a glass of water, for example. He looks at the use and purpose of language in metaphor, humor, even cursing, a seemingly unavoidable urge in people. Pinker stresses the importance of semantics and the meanings of words in a variety of contexts. Humans communicate with language, but "language isn't the manifestation of one mind; it's the joint manifestation of millions. The reason language works is that it reflects the world as we jointly experience it," remarked William Saletan in the New York Times Book Review. The Stuff of Thought "is Steven Pinker at his best: theoretical insight combined with clear illustration and elegant research summary, presented throughout with an endearing wit and linguistic creativity which has become his hallmark," commented David Crystal in a Financial Times review. "The book requires steady concentration, but despite the abstract character of its subject matter it is not difficult to read. That is Pinker's genius," Crystal mused.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

AI Magazine, fall, 1998, Tapio Elomaa, review of How the Mind Works, p. 135.

American Prospect, February, 2003, Melvin Konner, "The New Facts of Life," review of The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature, p. 45.

American Scientist, March, 2000, Evangeline A. Wheeler, "Verb Brains," review of Words and Rules: The Ingredients of Language, p. 180; January-February, 2003, John Dupre, "Making Hay with Straw Men," review of The Blank Slate, p. 69.

Booklist, September 1, 2007, Donna Seaman, review of The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature, p. 32.

Christian Science Monitor, October 28, 1999, Paul O. Williams, "A Man Who Knows Where the Pleasures of Language Lie or Lay," review of Words and Rules, p. 18; November 2, 2007, Ruth Walker, "Steven Pinker's Bright ‘Stuff,’" review of The Stuff of Thought, p. 18.

Chronicle of Higher Education, February 21, 2003, Richard Monastersky and Jamilah Evelyn, "MIT's Pinker May Head Back to Harvard; Alabama Newspaper Raises Nepotism Question; Princeton Dean to Lead Kenyon College."

Commentary, March, 1998, Arthur B. Cody, review of How the Mind Works, p. 69; December, 2002, Kevin Shapiro, "Not Silly Putty," review of The Blank Slate, p. 76.

Discover, February, 2000, Sarah Richardson, review of Words and Rules, p. 84.

Economist, October 18, 1997, review of How the Mind Works, p. 9; September 21, 2002, "Who's Afraid of the New Science? Human Nature," review of The Blank Slate; September 22, 2007, "Life Is a Foreign Language; The Use of Words," p. 102.

Financial Times, September 14, 2002, Ben Schrank, "Mind Games: Lunch with the FT," interview with Steven Pinker, p. 3; September 27, 2002, Samuel Brittan, "How to Modify the Human Race," review of The Blank Slate, p. 21; October 5, 2002, Galen Strawson, "Nature Finally Gets Even with Nurture: Galen Strawson Shows How Science and History Have Shattered Old Enlightenment Ideas of the Blank Slate and the Noble Savage," review of The Blank Slate, p. 4; October 6, 2007, David Crystal, "We Are What We Say," review of The Stuff of Thought, p. 29.

First Things: A Monthly Journal of Religion and Public Life, March, 1998, Edward T. Oakes, review of How the Mind Works, p. 35; December, 2002, Richard Neuhaus, "The Soul of Steven Pinker," review of The Blank Slate, p. 73.

Free Inquiry, spring, 2000, "Mind, Morality, and Evolution," interview with Steven Pinker, p. 55; summer, 2003, Stuart Jordan, "Nature vs. Nurture: The Controversy Continues," review of The Blank Slate, p. 66.

Houston Chronicle, November 10, 2002, Bruce Ramsey, "Man's ‘Blank Slate’ Is Not; Evolutionary Psychologist Affirms Nature's Hard-wiring," review of The Blank Slate, p. 18.

Humanist, March-April, 2003, Thomas Patton, review of The Blank Slate, p. 42.

Journal of Medical Speech-Language Pathology, September, 2004, Carlin F. Hageman, review of The Blank Slate, p. 123.

Kirkus Reviews, August 1, 2002, review of The Blank Slate, p. 1105; June 15, 2007, review of The Stuff of Thought.

Library Journal, October 15, 1997, Laurie Bartolini, review of How the Mind Works, p. 86; December, 1999, Paul A. D'Alessandro, review of Words and Rules, p. 152.

Narrative, October, 2003, Lisa Zunshine, "Theory of Mind and Experimental Representations of Fictional Consciousness," p. 270.

Nation, November 18, 2002, Steven Johnson, "Sociobiology and You," review of The Blank Slate, p. 12.

National Review, December 31, 1997, Daniel N. Robinson, review of How the Mind Works, p. 52; November 11, 2002, Anthony Daniels, "What Is a Man?," review of The Blank Slate, p. 48.

New Statesman, March 6, 1998, John Maddox, review of How the Mind Works, p. 46; September 16, 2002, John Gray, "The Darkness Within: John Gray on Why the Left Is in Flight from ‘Human Nature,’" review of The Blank Slate, p. 52.

New Yorker, November 25, 2002, Louis Menand, "What Comes Naturally," review of The Blank Slate.

New York Times, July 15, 2003, Nicholas Wade, "Early Voices: The Leap to Language," p. 1.

New York Times Book Review, February 27, 1994, Michael D. Coe, "The Language within Us," review of The Language Instinct, p. 7; November 28, 1999, Mark Aronoff, "Washington Sleeped Here," review of Words and Rules; October 13, 2002, Robert J. Richards, "The Evolutionary War: In Proposing a Genetic Version of Human Nature, Steven Pinker Takes on Stephen Jay Gould and Others," review of The Blank Slate, p. 9; September 23, 2007, William Saletan, "The Double Thinker," review of The Stuff of Thought, p. 14.

New York Times Magazine, September 15, 2002, David Rakoff, "Brain Work," interview with Steven Pinker, p. 27.

Philadelphia Business Journal, June 9, 2000, review of How the Mind Works, p. 21.

Psychology Today, September-October, 2003, Erik Strand, "Final Analysis Steven Pinker," interview with Steven Pinker, p. 96.

Publishers Weekly, December 13, 1993, review of The Language Instinct, p. 59; July 28, 1997, review of How the Mind Works, p. 59; September 6, 1999, review of Words and Rules, p. 91; August 12, 2002, review of The Blank Slate, p. 292; May 21, 2007, review of The Stuff of Thought, p. 43.

Reason, December, 1999, Frederick Turner, "Future Shocks," review of The Language Instinct, p. 20.

Science, December 2, 1988, Michael P. Maratsos, review of Connections and Symbols, p. 1316; July 31, 1998, Melvin Konner, review of How the Mind Works, p. 653; September 27, 2002, Patrick Bate- son, "The Corpse of a Wearisome Debate," review of The Blank Slate, p. 1.

Skeptic, spring, 2001, Michael Shermer, "The Pinker Instinct," interview with Steven Pinker, p. 88.

Skeptical Inquirer, January-February, 2003, Kendrick Frazier, review of The Blank Slate, p. 52; May-June, 2003, Austin Dacey, "Human Nature IS (Fill in the Blank)," review of The Blank Slate, p. 49; September 1, 2004, "Pinker, Tarter Named among Time's 100 Most Influential People," p. 9.

Spectator, September 21, 2002, Susan Greenfield, "Nature versus Nurture: The State of Play," review of The Blank Slate, p. 42; October 13, 2007, Michael Tanner, "Moving between Philosophy and Science," review of The Stuff of Thought, p. 49.

Time, October 20, 1997, J. Madeleine Nash, review of How the Mind Works, p. 92; October 28, 2002, Michael D. Lemonick, "What Makes Us Do It? In the Age-Old Debate of Nature vs. Nurture, an M.I.T. Prof Says Our Genes Don't Get Enough Respect," review of The Blank Slate, p. 54.

Washington Monthly, November, 1997, Matthew Miller, review of How the Mind Works, p. 58.

Wilson Quarterly, spring, 2005, "No Compromise," review of "Why Nature & Nurture Won't Go Away," p. 97.

ONLINE

Steven Pinker Home Page,http://pinker.wjh.harvard.edu (March 9, 2008).

OTHER

Talk of the Nation, March 21, 2007, Neal Conan, "A Kinder, Gentler World?," transcript of radio interview with Steven Pinker; October 17, 2007, Neal Conan, "Steven Pinker Comes to the ‘F’ Word's Defense," transcript of radio interview with Steven Pinker; January 28, 2008, Neal Conan, "Steven Pinker on Morality as a ‘Sixth Sense,’" transcript of radio interview with Steven Pinker.

Talk of the Nation: Science Friday, September 14, 2007, Joe Palca, "A Way with Words: Language and Human Nature," transcript of radio interview with Steven Pinker.