Steven Pinker's History of Thought

The Harvard Gazette presents an interview with cognitive psychologist, Steven Pinker. Pinker holds an interest for vision and language which are relevant to the mysteries of thought that drive his career. Growing up, his parents had always wanted for Pinker to become a psychiatrist due to his interest in the human mind which would create multiple career opportunities in medicine for Pinker. But, Pinker was not interested in pursuing a medical degree nor was he interested in psychopathology. His primary interest laid in cognitive psychology which all started by a particular incident involving the creation of profound questions about our kind and the ability to gain their answers through lab. Pinker began his journey towards cognitive psychology by finishing graduate school still with an interest in vision and language. After graduate school, Pinker was hired back at Harvard, where he originally left from, and was given the responsibility of three courses in language acquisition. Even though he closed down his lab in visual cognition, Pinker’s ultimate focus was on language. Steven Pinker, throughout his life, wrote a few books including: The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, Words and Rules, The Better Angels of Our Nature. This forthcoming book, The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21^st Century, focuses on Pinker’s liking of his freedom to avoid academese and the ability to write in an accessible style.