Pen and Paper Revolutionaries: Bringing Neuroscience to the People

Steven Pinker is in your head. Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology and teacher of core du jour Science B-62, “The Human Mind,” Pinker appeals to people who aren’t budding neurosurgeons. Pinker’s PhD student and Human Mind Teaching Fellow Ned Sahin describes the class as aimed at students “who maybe don’t care about past tense verbs or the synapse between two neurons, who maybe don’t care about one facet of psychology, but who do want a user’s guide to their brain.”

Pinker’s analysis of language, emotions and visual perception has made headway in his field and had influence beyond the classroom. The professor jokes that he first realized his work was reaching people beyond just psychologists went The New York Times put his new book, How the Mind Works, on a list of “Worst Books to Take to the Beach.” The list’s author, Pinker says, found the book’s biological focus disturbing.

Pinker’s most recent book, The Blank Slate, was published in 1992. “Part of the reason I wrote The Blank Slate was to address people like this woman who thought that the very premise that the mind is a function of the brain is upsetting,” Pinker says. The book is neither textbook nor scientific proposal, study or paper. In good Pinker fashion, it’s aimed at scientific laymen.

This ability to engage people outside academia makes Pinker stand out among his peers. “He is, above all else and above most other people, an excellent craftsman at communicating many ideas simply,” Sahin says. “Simple in this case means reducible to concepts that are digested by an interested and intellectual but not necessarily expert listener or reader.”

Pinker himself realizes the value of accessibility in academic research. “It multiplies the value of what my entire field has done, if it isn’t just shared with utter specialists, but if everyone else can learn this neat stuff too,” Pinker said.

To those of us out of the scientific loop, that sounds really neat.