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Steven Arthur Pinker 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.
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culture · Canadian-American psycholinguist (born 1954) · psychologist · linguist · anthropologist · philosopher · university teacher · non-fiction writer · evolutionary psychologist · experimental psychologist · author · cognitive scientist · also Steven Pinker, Steven Arthur Pinker, Dr. Steven Pinker, Pinker, Steven, Pinker
Born 18 September 1954 · Q212730
57 published statements · 0 followers
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Steven Pinker BBC Radio4 Desert Island Discs 30 June 2013 b0366xsb
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One of the things that people complain about is loneliness, disconnectedness. If you live in a society where your life is rarely threatened and most of your relationships are more on an economic exchange basis, then this could leave people feeling less connected. It might even create a need for fictive allies, especially in men.
s degree and became a guidance counsellor - they called her
85%The GuardianSource
“One of the things that people complain about is loneliness, disconnectedness. If you live in a society where your life is rarely threatened and most of your relationships are more on an economic exchange basis, then this could leave people feeling less connected. It might even create a need for fictive allies, especially in men.”
“s degree and became a guidance counsellor - they called her”
“a romantic career choice - all the papers were running stories about unemployed PhDs driving taxis, and going to graduate school was considered about as practical as becoming a painter or jazz musician. But that was a pretty tame form of rebellion and I was hardly a hellion - a good student, did fewer drugs than Bill Clinton, never drank in college, not even beer.”
“We have meaning and purpose here inside our heads, being the organisms that we are. We have brains that make it impossible for us to live our lives except in terms of meaning and purpose. The fact that you can look at meaning and purpose in one way, as a neuro-psychological phenomenon, doesn”
“It is raised by any explanation of behaviour. There is nothing specific to brains, genes, or evolutionary history that lends itself to bogus justifications for bad behaviour; any explanation can be abused in that way.”
“They treat the mind as a temporary repository for the auto-nomous ideas that congregate in a culture, and believe that the proper study of the mind is the study of words and images that float around in society.”
“It reminded me of George Bernard Shaw”
Public attention spiked: 2,761 Wikipedia readers in one day, 4.6× the usual 597, with 0 article edits. Coverage that week: “Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress | work by Pinker” (Encyclopaedia Britannica).
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Encyclopaedia Britannica: Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress | work by Pinker
The Guardian: Pinker’s progress: the celebrity scientist at the centre of the culture wars – podcast
The Guardian: When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows by Steven Pinker review – communication, broken down
The Guardian: Harvard author Steven Pinker appears on podcast linked to scientific racism
In the wake of the Trump administration's announcement that it would halt Harvard University's ability to enroll international students, Pinker hit back with a guest essay for The New York Times entitled "Harvard Derange
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The Guardian: Rationality by Steven Pinker review – reason and beyond
The Guardian: Rationality by Steven Pinker review – it all stands to reason
The Guardian: Pinker’s progress: the celebrity scientist at the centre of the culture wars
Publishers Weekly: Books by Steven Pinker and Complete Book Reviews
An open letter to the Linguistic Society of America requesting the removal of Pinker from its list of LSA Fellows and its list of media experts was signed by hundreds of academics
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Pinker stated that he was unaware of the nature of the charges against Epstein, and that he engaged in an unpaid favor for his Harvard colleague Dershowitz, as he had regularly done
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Awarded Carl Sagan Award for Public Understanding of Science (2018).
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Inc.: Steven Pinker, Enlightenment Now, and Leadership
The Guardian: Cross Section: Steven Pinker – Science Weekly podcast
The Guardian: Steven Pinker recommends books to make you an optimist
SFGate: ‘Enlightenment Now,’ by Steven Pinker
Awarded Emperor Has No Clothes Award (2017).
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Awarded William James Fellow Award (2016).
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Was elected to the National Academy of Sciences
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Awarded Richard Dawkins Award (2013).
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Cal Alumni Association: Steven Pinker’s War and Peace, Abridged
Cal Alumni Association: Steven Pinker’s History of (Non)Violence
Pinker argues that violence, including tribal warfare, homicide, cruel punishments, child abuse, animal cruelty, domestic violence, lynching, pogroms, and international and civil wars, has decreased over multiple scales
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“explainable by some combination of biological differences in average temperaments and talents interacting with socialization and bias”
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“s essays, criticizing his analytical methods. Gladwell replied, disputing Pinker”
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New Republic: Steven Pinker On How America Will Change
Is the novelist and philosopher Rebecca Goldstein
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Awarded Humanist of the Year (2006).
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Received the American Humanist Association's Humanist of the Year award for his contributions to public understanding of human evolution
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Pinker provided to Alan Dershowitz, a personal friend of Pinker's who was Jeffrey Epstein's defense attorney, Pinker's own interpretation of the wording of a federal law pertaining to the enticement of minors into illega
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Awarded Walter P. Kistler Book Award (2005).
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Pinker began promoting the view that Ashkenazi Jews are innately particularly intelligent
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Awarded Emperor Has No Clothes Award (2004).
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And one of Prospect and Foreign Policy's 100 top public intellectuals in both years the poll was carried out, 2005 and 2008; in 2010 and 2011 he was named by Foreign Policy to its list of top global thinkers
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Pinker was named in Time's "The 100 Most Influential People in the World Today", and in 2005, 2008, 2010, and 2011 in Foreign Policy's list of "Top 100 Global Thinkers"
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“s obituary, an uncharacteristically sober and sympathetic piece, for a specialist journal.”
Awarded Troland Research Awards (1993).
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Pinker, with Paul Bloom, published a paper arguing that the human language faculty must have evolved through natural selection
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Pinker and Alan Prince published a critique of a connectionist model of the acquisition of the past tense (a textbook problem in language acquisition), followed by a series of studies of how people use and acquire the pa
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Awarded Boyd McCandless Award (1986).
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Awarded APA Distinguished Scientific Award for an Early Career Contribution to Psychology (1984).
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And they divorced in 1992; he married again in 1995 and they divorced
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Studied at Harvard University, Doctor of Philosophy (1979).
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Studied at McGill University, Bachelor of Arts (1976).
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With a Bachelor of Arts in psychology, then did doctoral studies in experimental psychology at Harvard University under Stephen Kosslyn, receiving a PhD in 1979
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Studied at Dawson College, Diploma of College Studies (1973).
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Born 1954-09-18.
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In Montreal, Quebec, to an upper-middle class secular Jewish family in an English-speaking community
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And owned a small necktie factory in Montreal
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a romantic career choice - all the papers were running stories about unemployed PhDs driving taxis, and going to graduate school was considered about as practical as becoming a painter or jazz musician. But that was a pretty tame form of rebellion and I was hardly a hellion - a good student, did fewer drugs than Bill Clinton, never drank in college, not even beer.
We have meaning and purpose here inside our heads, being the organisms that we are. We have brains that make it impossible for us to live our lives except in terms of meaning and purpose. The fact that you can look at meaning and purpose in one way, as a neuro-psychological phenomenon, doesn
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