Perspective

Steven Pinker is a linguist, author, cognitive scientist, and experimental psychologist. At the time the book was published, Pinker worked as a professor in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and was the director of the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Currently, Pinker is a professor at Harvard College and works as the Johnstone Family Professor at Harvard's Department of Psychology.

Pinker has authored many books including The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, Words and Rules: The Ingredients of Language, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature, The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature, and The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined.

Pinker is known as a student and proponent of Noam Chomsky's work, with the exception that Pinker does not believe that language is the by-product of other...