Steven Pinker: Biography Of The Father Of Evolutionary Psychology
Steven Pinker was born in Montreal in 1954 and is now 65 years old. He was given the nickname of the father of evolutionary psychology. Yet he also developed other facets such as scientist, linguist and writer.
He has made a significant contribution to the branches of study of perception and language development in children. For these reasons, today we’re going to find out what the life of Steven Pinker was like and some of his most interesting posts.
The life of Steven Pinker
Steven Pinker was born into a Jewish family. Her father was a lawyer and her mother an advisor and vice-rector of an institute. He also has a sister, a child psychologist and currently a journalist, and a political analyst brother.
In 1979, Steven Pinker received his doctorate in experimental psychology from Harvard University. He then became a researcher and professor at Stanford University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology .
In his love life, Steven Pinker got married three times. The first with clinical psychologist Nancy Etcoff. The second with cognitive psychologist Illavenin Subbiah. The third with the professor of philosophy Rebeca Goldstein, with whom he is still married today.
Pinker was Co-Director of the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience from 1994 to 1999. He is currently a professor at Harvard and continues to cultivate his facet of writer and researcher. In addition, he frequently participates in debates and conferences on subjects related to science and the human being.
Contributions and publications
Early in his professional career, Steven Pinker focused on researching the characteristics and development of language in children. What he wanted was to support Chomsky’s theory which said, as the article Noam Chomsky’s Linguistic Theory: From Beginning to Present puts it , that language is a “formal, universal and innate mechanism, not pragmatic or semantic. ”.
Unlike Chomsky, although he supports his theory that language is innate, he considers that it depends on cognitive processes such as memorizing words and their use through grammatical rules that must be learned.
At this point, one of his most outstanding books is The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language ( The language instinct ). However, there is also another interesting book with the title Words and Rules: The Ingredients of Language ( Words and Rules: The Ingredients of Language ).
In addition to this interest in linguistics, Steven Pinker has always looked at the behavior of people. Indeed, one of his most famous books entitled The Decline of Violence and Its Implications ( The decline of violence and its implications ). However, he also focused heavily on theory of mind. Her books revealed at this stage How the Mind Works ( How the Mind ) and The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature ( The blank slate: the modern denial of human nature ).
Nevertheless, Steven Pinker has written several articles and essays on the mind and language. For example, the rules of the language , the language as an adaptation to cognitive nests , And then , how the mind works , etc. So many very interesting and relevant publications.
Steven Pinker, an influential person
Everything he has done and continues to do has not gone unnoticed. In 2004, Time magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world. In addition, Prospect and Foreign Policy awarded him in 2005 the title of one of the 100 most remarkable intellectuals.
On top of all this, we cannot forget that Steven Pinker received neither more nor less than 9 honorary doctorates. In addition, he is currently Chairman of the Committee on the Use of the American Heritage Dictionary and writes for such well-known media outlets as The New York Times , Time and The Atlantic .
In conclusion, Steven Pinker has been and still is a person who continues to research human spirit, language and behavior. The articles he writes for the media above are very interesting and up to date.
Our thoughts Noam Chomsky is one of the most brilliant minds of the 20th century. At 90, he continues to write and give lectures.
