Steven Pinker

Steven Pinker is a Canadian-American cognitive psychologist, linguist, and author whose bestselling books on the human mind, language, and human progress have made him one of the world's most influential public intellectuals. Born in Montreal in 1954, he studied Experimental Psychology at McGill University and Harvard, and is the Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology at Harvard University. Pinker's books include The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, The Blank Slate (which argues that human nature has an innate component that progressive politics must reckon with rather than deny), The Better Angels of Our Nature, Enlightenment Now, and Rationality. His work is characterised by its clarity, its provocative arguments, and its defence of science, reason, and humanism against both left-wing and right-wing forms of irrationalism. He has been named one of Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People. His audiobooks and books offer listeners and readers rigorous, accessible science writing that challenges comfortable assumptions — the kind of books that make you argue back while acknowledging you're learning something.