Dr. Steven Pinker, a Harvard psychologist and prolific author, has often been described as a cheerleader for science, reason, and humanism. He is often maligned by his critics as a defender of the ...

In his last outing, How the Mind Works, the author of the well-received The Language Instinct made a case for evolutionary psychology—or the view that human beings have a hard-wired nature that ...

United Nations-- The headlines from around the world are gloomy; millions are starving, children dying in war zones, pandemics, trade wars and terror attacks. But ...

Every day, we read news articles about war, shootings, pollution, inequality, and the threat of nuclear weapons. These stories may suggest that the world is in its worst state ever, especially for ...

‘Tell people there’s an invisible man in the sky who created the universe,” the comedian George Carlin once observed, “and the vast majority will believe you. Tell them the paint is wet, and they have ...

He may have been named one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people, but Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology Steven Pinker says he’s still a little surprised when people stop him on the ...

In the controversial yet bestselling books The Better Angels of Our Nature and Enlightenment Now, Harvard linguist Steven Pinker made the case that humanity has been getting richer and less violent ...

L ast month, Steven Pinker published Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters. The book represents yet another milestone in the author’s slide from world-renowned linguist and ...

"There are many battles of history that were lost because of botched communication," says Steven Pinker, a professor of psychology at Harvard University. In today's workplace where email and Slack ...

When The Chronicle's book editor sent me Steven Pinker's new book, "The Better Angels of Our Nature," to review, he wrote on a note, "I hope he's right!" referring to the subtitle about the decline of ...