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Q & A

Steven Pinker

Steven Pinker is JohnstoneProfessor of Psychology at HarvardUniversity. He studies visualcognition and the psychology andneuroscience of language, and haswritten six books: four for a generalaudience — The Language Instinct,How the Mind Works, Words andRules, and The Blank Slate — andtwo technical books on languageacquisition that are not sold instores.

What turned you on to your areaof science in the first place? Inever trust scientists’ answers tothis question (including my own).People craft their autobiographiesinto satisfying narratives, andretrospectively plant portents inearly chapters that foretell what willhappen in later ones. Reality ismore like a home movie: too boringto interest anyone but theprotagonists. Genes and chance fitpeople with certain the talents andtemperaments for science, and anormal upbringing exposes them tothe cultural prerequisites. At somepoint they take a course or find asummer job in which the goalsexcite them, the daily grind seemspleasant, and the peers arecongenial. They gradually start tospecialize in the field in college andbeyond, and there they are.

I like a good story, too, so here’sone. When I was a teenager, myparents gave me a subscription toa monthly series of Time-Lifescience books: Electricity andMagnetism, The Planets, Evolution,and a really interesting one calledThe Mind. It first showed me thatthe mind could be studiedscientifically, like magnetism orMars, and I’ve been interested eversince. That’s my story and I’msticking to it (for now).

Do you have a favourite paper?Within biology, Robert Trivers’s“The evolution of reciprocalaltruism” (Au: please give theyear and journal citation details).

It not only solved the problem ofhow altruism could evolve amongnon-kin, but supported the theorywith an insightful analysis of moralemotions such as sympathy,gratitude, guilt, shame, trust, andanger.

Do you have a scientific hero?My advisor, the late Roger Brown,invented the scientific study oflanguage acquisition andperformed the first experiments onthe Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (thatlanguage affects thought), the ‘tip-of-the-tongue’ phenomenon, andflashbulb memories (where wereyou when you heard that JFK wasshot?). He was an elegant man anda brilliant writer, who authored awitty and original textbook in socialpsychology, which had the fate ofmost witty and original textbooks: itdidn't sell.

What is the best advice you’vebeen given? Roger warned methat. however. much I studiedchildren, I’d never reallyunderstand what they were doing— words of realism that saved mefrom much frustration. Anotherinvaluable bit of advice came froman editor, when I was planning myfirst book for a general audience.She said I should not think of myreadership as the general public —truck drivers, grannies, chickenpluckers. They don’t buy books.Any attempt to reach them wouldlead me to write in motherese.Instead, I should write for an oldcollege roommate — someone assmart as I was but who didn’thappen to go into my field.Respecting the intelligence ofreaders and acknowledging theirlack of specialized knowledge arethe two prerequisites for goodscience writing.

Do you have a favouriteconference? Yes: a week-longconference in Venice on ‘Selectionand the Mind’, organized byMichael Gazzaniga, with DavidHubel, Jean-Pierre Changeux,Stephen Jay Gould, Gary Lynch,and three or four others. Thespeakers and the audience werethe same. There were two two-hourtalks a day, separated by fourhours of lunch and discussion. Myleast favourite is the annual Society

for Neuroscience symposium.Twenty-eight thousand people atan enormous convention centerstanding by posters or speedingthrough 15 minute talks.

Any views on the ‘electronicrevolution’ in journal publishing?It’s about time. It’s crazy that largepublishers can enjoy the unpaidlabor of authors, referees, andeditors and then force librarians topay through the nose. In the age ofthe Internet all they can offer isprestige, which, as our colleaguesin the humanities would say, is asocial construction. Editorialboards can perform a prestigetransplant and move wholesale tonew electronic journals.

Any strong views on the peerreview system? It’s better thanthe alternative but leaves much tobe desired. Who doesn’t have ahorror story about an idiotic reviewfrom a prestigious journal? Perhapsreviewers can themselves bereviewed, like on amazon.com.

What do you think are the bigquestions to be answered nextin your field? First, how a basicthought — a proposition consistingof a subject and a predicate — isrepresented in the brain. We haveideas about how to represent apuree of concepts — ‘dogs’, ‘men’,‘biting’ — but not the differencebetween ‘Dog Bites Man’ and ‘ManBites Dog’. Second, how innatedispositions unfold in biologicaldevelopment. We have reason tobelieve that the genomepredisposes people to fear snakes,crave sex with attractive partners(who are not their siblings), andacquire grammatical language. Butwe have no idea how information inDNA can wire such traits into thebrain.

What is the major ethical issuefacing biology today? Dealingwith the so-called bioethicists.Many are in favour of preventablesuffering, infirmity, and death, aslong as they get to preserve somebadly argued intuitions abouthuman dignity and naturalness.

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