Steven Pinker
Author
Pub. Date
2011
Language
English
Formats
Description
We've all asked, "What is the world coming to?" But we seldom ask, "How bad was the world in the past?" In this startling new book, cognitive scientist Steven Pinker shows that the past was much worse. Evidence of a bloody history has always been around us: genocides in the Old Testament, gory mutilations in Shakespeare and Grimm, monarchs who beheaded their relatives, and American founders who dueled with their rivals. The murder rate in medieval...
Author
Publisher
W. Morrow and Co
Pub. Date
1994
Language
English
Description
Everyone has questions about language. Some are from everyday experience: Why do immigrants struggle with a new language, only to have their fluent children ridicule their grammatical errors? Why can't computers converse with us? Why is the hockey team in Toronto called the Maple Leafs, not the Maple Leaves? Some are from popular science: Have scientists really reconstructed the first language spoken on earth? Are there genes for grammar? Can chimpanzees...
Author
Publisher
Viking, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
Pub. Date
[2021]
Language
English
Description
"Can reading a book make you more rational? Can it explain why there seems to be so much irrationality in the world, including, let's be honest, in each of us? These are the goals of Steven Pinker's follow-up to Enlightenment Now (Bill Gates's "new favorite book of all time"). Humans today are often portrayed as cavemen out of time, poised to react to a lion in the grass with a suite of biases, blind spots, fallacies, and illusions. But this, Pinker...
Author
Publisher
Viking
Pub. Date
c2007
Language
English
Description
Psychologist Pinker explains how the mind works in a completely new way--by examining how we use words. Every time we swear, we reveal something about human emotions. When we use an innuendo to convey a bribe, threat, or sexual come-on (rather than just blurting it out), we disclose something about human relationships. Our use of prepositions and tenses tap into peculiarly human concepts of space and time, and our nouns and verbs tap into mental models...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
A former Google data scientist presents an insider's look at what the vast, instantly available amounts of information from the Internet can reveal about human civilization and society
"How much sex are people really having? How many Americans are actually racist? Is America experiencing a hidden back-alley abortion crisis? Can you game the stock market? Does violent entertainment increase the rate of violent crime? Do parents treat sons differently...
Publisher
Harper Perennial
Pub. Date
[2018]
Language
English
Description
Presents essays responding to a question about what scientific term or concept ought to be more widely known, written by such authors as Jared Diamond, Richard Thaler, Richard Dawkins, Lisa Randall, Steven Pinker, and Carlo Rovelli
Publisher
Liveright Publishing Corporation, a division of W.W. Norton & Company, Inc
Pub. Date
[2016]
Language
English
Description
A collection of influential pieces originally published in the popular "New York Times" column explores subjects ranging from consciousness and morality to the gender divide and gun control, with an introduction about the column's founding and editorial process