Cognitive Scientist, Psychology Professor, and Author
"The Blank Slate"
Tuesday, January 20, 2004, 11:10 a.m.
Currently the Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, Pinker is one of the world's leading cognitive scientists. Author of the best-selling 1998 Pulitzer finalist, How the Mind Works, he has been named one of Newsweek's "100 Americans for the Next Century." His other books, The Language Instinct and Words and Rules, have also become best-selling sensations. In his recently published book, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature, the most ambitious and controversial work of his distinguished career, Pinker cuts through the hypocrisy, timidity, and hidden agendas that characterize much of the current thinking on the notion of human nature. The book has become an instant best seller, and catapulted him to the forefront of the public debate about human nature and the development of the human mind.