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COPYRIGHT 2001 Skeptics Society & Skeptic Magazine
AS I SAT DOWN TO INTERVIEW Steven Pinker, the 46-year old Professor of Psychology in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT, I suddenly realized that I had not bringed my notes. Fortunately, he holded my attention such that I did not need them.
Herein lies a key insight into language instinct as presented by Pinker in numerous scientific papers and three bestselling books: we have an evolved instinct to acquire the rules of language, but we have to learn the specific exceptions to the rules of any particular language. The rule for past tense in English, for example, is that you add an "ed" on the end of the word. It's a simple rule that all children quickly grasp. More difficult are the exceptions to the rules-brought instead of bringed, held instead of holded-what sounds jarring to an adult ear seems natural to a child.
Born in Montreal, Canada, in 1954 and raised in a Jewish community that had taken root there earlier in the century when the doors of immigration were dosed in America, Pinker's father was a salesman and his mother a homemaker who raised their three children (Steve is first born with a younger sister and brother) with the understanding that they would go to college and become professionals. They did. Pinker's sister is a writer and school psychologist and his brother is a policy analyst for the Canadian government. Pinker started his college life unspectacularly at Dawson, a two-year community college known as the "Hippie College," but at which Pinker says he came to the party too late. "I was hardly a hippie. I didn't do drugs or drink." Pinker transferred to the highly regarded McGill University, where he discovered cognitive psychology and the rigorous but rewarding methods of science. "When I discovered you could bring someone into a lab and ask questions about human behavior, that's when everything fell into place." From McGill Pinker went to Harvard for his Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology, and he's been on the fast track ever since, landing a postdoc at MIT in 1979, an Assistant Professorship at Harvard in 1980, another at Stanford in 1981, and finding a permanent home at MIT in 1982 where he's been ever since.
After a decade of publishing dozens of solid peer-reviewed scientific papers Pinker discovered popular science writing in the mid-1990s, but in a new style where one creates original works for both the general public and one's colleagues. His literary agent, John Brockman, is a pioneer in this genre which he calls the "third culture," recalling C.P. Snow's famed "two culture" gap between science and literature. Pinker's The language Instinct, How the Mind Works and Words and Rules are all highly readable, yet original works of science appreciated and cited by professionals in his field...and fields beyond.
Pinker's curriculum vitae contains pages of awards, fellowships, grants, and achievements that have lofted him above rank-and-file working scientists, even at a prestigious institution like MIT He received the Troland Award from the National Academy of Sciences for his research on visual cognition and the psychology of language, two prizes for research from the American Psychological Association, five book awards, and numerous teaching awards from MIT for his popular style as an educator. He serves on several professional editorial panels and is an advisor to the forthcoming 8-hour NOVA documentary on evolution. His public opinions and social commentary can often be found in the pages of The New York Times, Time, Slate, and The New Yorker.
A self-described out-of-the-closet atheist and secular humanist, Pinker has the lean body of a road racing cyclist, a sport he enjoys on tandem with his wife and during which he can clear his mind in order to discover how it works. Journalists repeatedly tag him with "rock star good looks" because of his curly shock of thick long hair, but I don't see it. I'm seeing a science star who brings cachet to the life of the intellect, someone who makes it seem cool to use your brains. I'm looking at the next generation of skeptics: fearless and free thinking, boldly going where no mind has gone before, an apt description for a Trekker whose childhood community also spawned William Shatner. We began with that small community, and worked our way to the larger community of humanity.
Skeptic: You were raised in a Jewish community in Montreal?
Pinker: Yes, in fact, the same community that spawned Leonard Cohen, William Shatner, Burt Bacharach, Mordechai Richler, Saul Bellow.
Skeptic: Were your parents secular Jews?
Pinker: I had a Reform Jewish upbringing and attended Hebrew school and Sunday school once a week. In fact, I became a Sunday school teacher when I was in college as a part-time job. I taught history of Zionism, ethics, and moral reasoning to eleven year olds!
Skeptic: But weren't you an atheist?
Pinker: I was, but it was better than flipping burgers! Yet I was interested in the material I was covering and it was all secular-the recent history of Israel, the development of moral reasoning (as an eleven-year-old would understand it), and so on.
Skeptic: Were your parents nonbelievers?
Pinker: I never asked them. They never alluded to God as a person. They took Judaism seriously as part of our cultural identity.
Skeptic: Were your parents and grandparents from Canada?
Pinker: Both parents are from Montreal. My grandparents were from eastern Europe, one from Warsaw, one from Kishinev (in what's now called Moldova), which was in Romania when my grandmother grew up. The other two were from a shtetl in Poland. They immigrated to America in the 1920s. After immigration from Eastern Europe was cut off to the U.S., the alternative was Canada, and Montreal was the place.
Skeptic: What was the social class of your parents and grandparents?
Pinker: My paternal grandparents were working class. My paternal grandfather worked behind a cheese counter at a supermarket and my maternal grandfather was more entrepreneurial-he had a tie factory for many decades. My father became a lawyer, but when I was young he was a clothing salesman. He was also a landlord for several small rental units. My mother was a housewife when I was growing up, then she became a high school guidance counselor and then vice principal of a Jewish school, from...
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