From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

Related e

Wikipedia Wiktionary Tumblr Wikisource YouTube Shop Featured: A Scheme for abolishing all Words is one of the wittiest and smartest comments on semantics. (Illustration: extreme close-up from the movie "The Big Swallow" (1901), produced and directed by James Williamson (1855-1933)

Steven Arthur Pinker (born September 18 1954) is a prominent Canadian-American experimental psychologist, cognitive scientist, and author of popular science. 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, and he is most famous for popularizing the idea that language is an "instinct" or biological adaptation shaped by natural selection rather than a by-product of general intelligence. He is the author of five books for a general audience, which include The Language Instinct (1994), How the Mind Works (1999), Words and Rules (2000), The Blank Slate (2002), and The Stuff of Thought (2007). Pinker's books have won numerous awards and been New York Times best-sellers.