Steven Pinker
About Steven Pinker
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A History of Violence
Faced with the ceaseless stream of news about war, crime, and terrorism, one could easily think we live in the most violent age ever seen. Yet as New York Times bestselling author Steven Pinker shows in this startling and engaging new talk, just the opposite is true: violence has been diminishing for millennia and we may be living in the most peaceful time in our species's existence. For most of history, war, slavery, infanticide, child abuse, assassinations, pogroms, gruesome punishments, deadly quarrels, and genocide were ordinary features of life. But today, Pinker shows audiences how all these forms of violence have dwindled and are widely condemned. How has this happened?
This groundbreaking talk continues Pinker's exploration of the essence of human nature, mixing psychology and history to provide a remarkable picture of an increasingly nonviolent world. The key, he explains, is to understand our intrinsic motives—the inner demons that incline us toward violence and the better angels that steer us away—and how changing circumstances have allowed our better angels to prevail. Exploding fatalist myths about humankind's inherent violence and the curse of modernity, this ambitious and provocative talk is sure to be hotly debated, and will challenge and change the way we think about our society.
Speaking videos
Media coverage
Steven Pinker: How Do Nature And Nurture Combine To Make Us ...
Psychologist Steven Pinker describes how far we've come in understanding how both nature and nurture make us ... us.
Why Computers Won't Takeover the World, with Steven Pinker | Big ...
Steven Pinker believes there's some interesting gender psychology at play when it comes to the robopocalypse. Could artificial intelligence become evil or are ...
Steven Pinker | Big Think
Steven Pinker is an experimental psychologist and one of the world's foremost writers on language, mind, and human nature. Currently Johnstone Family ...
Despite The Headlines, Steven Pinker Says The World Is Becoming ...
Psychologist Steven Pinker's book The Better Angels of Our Nature explains that the world is actually growing less violent, even though the media may give a ...
The Scientism of Steven Pinker - NYTimes.com
In which an attempted rehabilitation of the term “scientism” actually vindicates scientism's critics.
Books by Steven Pinker
“Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress” (2018)
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER "My new favorite book of all time." --Bill Gates If you think the world is coming to an end, think again: people are living longer, healthier, freer, and happier lives, and while our problems are formidable, the solutions lie in the Enlightenment ideal of using reason and science. Is the world really falling apart? Is the ideal of progress obsolete? In this elegant assessment of the human condition in the third millennium, cognitive scientist and public intellectual Steven Pinker urges us to step back from the gory headlines and prophecies of doom, which play to our psychological biases. Instead, follow the data: In seventy-five jaw-dropping graphs, Pinker shows that life, health, prosperity, safety, peace, knowledge, and happiness are on the rise, not just in the West, but worldwide. This progress is not the result of some cosmic force. It is a gift of the Enlightenment: the conviction that reason and science can enhance human flourishing. Far from being a naïve hope, the Enlightenment, we now know, has worked. But more than ever, it needs a vigorous defense. The Enlightenment project swims against currents of human nature--tribalism, authoritarianism, demonization, magical thinking--which demagogues are all too willing to exploit. Many commentators, committed to political, religious, or romantic ideologies, fight a rearguard action against it. The result is a corrosive fatalism and a willingness to wreck the precious institutions of liberal democracy and global cooperation. With intellectual depth and literary flair, Enlightenment Now makes the case for reason, science, and humanism: the ideals we need to confront our problems and continue our progress.]
“Language, Cognition, and Human Nature: Selected Articles” (2013)
“Learnability and Cognition: The Acquisition of Argument Structure (Learning, Development, and Conceptual Change)” (2013)
“The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined” (2012)
“Words and Rules: The Ingredients of Language” (2011)
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