Steven Pinker
Championing evidence-based optimism and making cognitive science accessible through elegant, rigorous prose.
Biography
Steven Pinker is a Canadian-American cognitive psychologist, linguist, and author born in Montreal, Quebec in 1954. A professor at Harvard University, he has been named one of the world's most influential intellectuals by Time, Foreign Policy, and Prospect magazines. His books on language, mind, and human nature have won numerous awards and brought cognitive science to a broad audience. Pinker is known for his data-driven optimism, arguing in works like The Better Angels of Our Nature and Enlightenment Now that the world is measurably improving.
Best Starting Book
The Language Instinct
Witty, accessible, and endlessly fascinating β it turns the everyday miracle of language into a gripping scientific detective story.
Reading Order
The Language Instinct
A dazzling introduction to how language works β Pinker's breakthrough book that made linguistics thrilling.
How the Mind Works
An ambitious synthesis of evolutionary psychology and cognitive science that explains why we think, feel, and act as we do.
The Better Angels of Our Nature
A monumental argument that violence has declined throughout history β Pinker's most influential and debated work.
Enlightenment Now
The sequel to Better Angels, making the case for reason, science, and progress with mountains of data.
The Blank Slate
A provocative dismantling of the myth that human nature is entirely shaped by culture.