Steven Pinker: biography, theory and main contributions

Steven Pinker is a linguist, psychologist, and writer known primarily for his role in the dissemination of different ideas related to evolutionary psychology, with the communication, visual perception and cognition, and computational theory of mind, as well as by his own theories of language development and the decline of speech. violence.

In this article we will analyze the theory and contributions of Steven Pinker, focusing on his perspectives on communication, human nature, and the decline of violence. To begin we will do a brief review of his biography and his professional career.

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Steven Pinker Biography

Steven Pinker was born in Montreal in 1954 to a Jewish family that had emigrated to Canada from Poland and present-day Moldova. He received his doctorate in Experimental Psychology from Harvard University in 1979; His mentor was Stephen Kosslyn, a leading author in the fields of cognitive psychology and neuroscience.

Later he was

researcher and professor at Stanford University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, often known as "MIT". Between 1994 and 1999 he was co-director of the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at this renowned institution.

Today Pinker is a professor of psychology at Harvard University and continues his work as a theorist, researcher, writer and science communicator. He is also a relevant figure in the press and frequently participates in conferences and debates on various topics related to science and the human being in general.

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Contributions, publications and merits

Pinker has made numerous publications and research on visual perception, psycholinguistics and interpersonal relationships that have been awarded by very prominent institutions, including the National Academy of Sciences, the American Psychological Association and the Cognitive Neuroscience Society.

He has also written 14 books on these topics and human nature in general, with an emphasis on cognitive and evolutionary perspectives. The most celebrated are "The instinct of language: how the mind creates language", "How the mind works", "The clean sweep: The modern denial of human nature" and "The decline of violence and its implications ”.

Theories of communication and the human being

Early in his professional career, Pinker conducted research on the development and characteristics of language in children. His results led him to publicly support the theory of Noam chomsky, which states that human beings have innate brain abilities that allow understanding of language.

Pinker's methodology at this time was based on studying the behavior of people and going back in phylogenetic evolution in order to explain the development of brain functions. Using this method he developed hypotheses about language and other phenomena, such as three-dimensional vision and logical reasoning.

According to Pinker, the innate capacity of human beings for language depends fundamentally on two cognitive processes: memorization of words and their manipulation through grammar ruless, equally learned. These approaches of a biological nature have received criticism focused on moral or philosophical aspects.

This author generally defends the idea that genes determine a significant proportion of human behavior. Although he has claimed that he identifies with egalitarian feminism, he has been criticized for his assertions about the existence of biological differences between people of different ethnicities, as well as between men and women.

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The decline of violence

In his popular book "The Decline of Violence and Its Implications" Pinker argues that, from a proportional and historical point of view, the frequency of violence violent behaviors it has tended to decline globally, especially in the last two centuries. In this work he explores the general perception that violence has become more present today.

According to Pinker, the decline in violence began with the rise of the states, characterized by obtaining a monopoly on behaviors of this type, while in most individuals they were punished through the use of the law. This would have allowed a large number of people to live with a lower risk of murder.

Subsequently, factors such as the expansion of trade, the humanitarian revolution associated with the Enlightenment movement, the increase Cosmopolitanism or the rejection of slavery further contributed to the decline in the relative number of violent behaviors.

Pinker suggests that the experience of the two World Wars was fundamental in the decline of violence that occurred during the twentieth century. He also cites as relevant variables globalization, movements for the rights of minorities and non-human animals, as well as a supposed decrease in the weight of ideologies.

This author attributes the common perception that violence is increasingly frequent to the confirmation bias and affirms that we have entered the era that he calls “the Long Peace”. Several authors have criticized these ideas, arguing that they enhance the lack of concern for violence and war conflicts and interpret numerical data in a reductionist way.