Steven Pinker: biography, theory and main contributions

He is one of the most famous psychologists for his theories on violence and the use of language.

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

In this article we will analyze Steven Pinker's theory and contributions, focusing on his perspectives on the development of language and the decline of violence.focusing on his perspectives on communication, human nature and the decline of violence. To begin with, we will make a brief review of his biography and his professional trajectory.

Biography of Steven Pinker

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

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

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

Contributions, publications and merits

Pinker has carried out numerous publications and research on visual perception, psycholinguistics and interpersonal relationships, which have been awarded which have received awards from leading 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 on human nature in general, with emphasis on cognitive and evolutionary perspectives. The most celebrated are "The Language Instinct: How Language Creates the Mind", "How the Mind Works", "The Clean Slate: 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 Noam Chomsky's theory, which affirms that human beings have innate brain capacities that allow for language comprehension..

Pinker's methodology at this time was based on studying people's behavior 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: the memorization of words and their manipulation by means of equally learned grammatical rules.grammatical rules, which are also learned. These biologistic approaches have been criticized on moral or philosophical grounds.

This author generally defends the idea that genes determine a significant proportion of human behavior. Although he has stated 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.

• You may be interested in "Genetics and behavior: do genes decide how we act?"

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 violent behavior has tended to decrease worldwide, especially in the last two centuries. In this work he explores the widespread perception that violence has become more present today.

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

Later factors such as the expansion of trade, the humanitarian revolution associated with the Enlightenment movement, the rise of 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 central to the decline in violence that occurred during the 20th century. that occurred during the twentieth century. He also cites globalization, movements for minority and nonhuman animal rights, as well as a supposed decline in the weight of ideologies as relevant variables.

This author attributes the common perception that violence is increasingly prevalent to confirmation bias and asserts that we have entered the era he calls "the Long Peace." A number of authors have criticized these ideas on the grounds that they reinforce a lack of concern about violence and war and interpret numerical data in a reductionist manner.