Steven Pinker
Steven Pinker is a respected experimental psychologist, popular science writer, and academic ping-pong ball bouncing back and forth from MIT to Harvard, currently residing in the latter as the Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology. Pinker was intense nearly from the get-go. Born September 18, 1956, he was raised in the ‘argumentative’ English-speaking Jewish community of Montreal. However, he quickly shed the beliefs of his community, demonstrating a strong individuality when he deconverted at the age of 13 (though he was a “serious cultural Jew at various times”). From that point on, he devoted his life to the study of human nature.
Pinker has had quite a bit of influence on my personal philosophy as an atheist/humanist. In The Blank Slate, we join him on a quest to reach a complete understanding of human nature, along the way cutting the branches of myth and misconception from our path. Forget the folk-tales about the infinite capacity and malleability of the human brain (for instance, “Did you know that we only use 10% of our brains?” BULLSHIT!), etc. In the book, we get the skinny on the moral and practical repercussions of a detailed, mostly fixed (yet also somewhat malleable) human nature which doesn’t vary from society to society. These repercussions are much less serious than you’d be led to think by the culture zealots on the left and the religious zealots on the right. At its best this book is a fascinating look at human nature and perception, and the histories thereof, imparting upon the reader a wealth of knowledge on these subjects. It demolishes many of the biases and myths about human nature which often permeate and pollute intellectual discourse. At the very least, The Blank Slate is optimistic about the human condition.
Other pop-sci books Pinker has written are The Language Instinct, in which he argues that humans are innately capable of language; How the Mind Works, wherein he derives explanations of the mind from its “reverse-engineering”; and Words and Rules, which examines language again, but focuses particularly on regular and irregular verbs, and is apparently a bit more technical. He has also written many scientific papers. You should check out his bibliography here.
Although he is widely recognized as one of America’s most prominent secular intellectuals, and is a self-identified “bright,” he does not fight religion head on, a la Dawkins. No matter, his writing is so sharp that it cuts away all excess rhetoric, religious or political, in favor of lean empirical explanations for many of the exciting puzzles of human nature.
Read about his worldview.
[UPDATE: The Sunday September 23, 2007 New York Times reviewed Pinker's new book The Stuff of Thought.]