Steven Arthur Pinker 是加拿大裔美国认知心理学家、语言学家和科普作家。 他是进化心理学和心智计算理论的倡导者。
Pinker教授出生于加拿大蒙特利尔，1976年取得麦吉尔大学心理学学士学位，1979年取得哈佛大学实验心理学博士学位。 1982—2003年，在麻省理工学院脑与认知科学系任教，潜心研究儿童的语言学习模式，最终成为麻省理工学院认知神经学中心的掌门人。1994年，他的《语言本能》一经出版，就成为轰动一时的畅销书，并入选《美国科学家》（American Scientist）评出的20世纪100本最佳科学书籍。

“the mind is a neural computer”

“It's natural to think that living things must be the handiwork of a designer. But it was also natural to think that the sun went around the earth. Overcoming naive impressions to figure out how things really work is one of humanity's highest callings.

“Equality is not the empirical claim that all groups of humans are interchangeable; it is the moral principle that individuals should not be judged or constrained by the average properties of their group.”

“Much of what is today called "social criticism" consists of members of the upper classes denouncing the tastes of the lower classes (bawdy entertainment, fast food, plentiful consumer goods) while considering themselves egalitarians.”

“Thanks to the redundancy of language, yxx cxn xndxrstxnd whxt x xm wrxtxng xvxn xf x rxplxcx xll thx vxwxls wxth xn "x" (t gts lttl hrdr f y dn't vn kn whr th vwls r)”

“The supposedly immaterial soul, we now know, can be bisected with a knife, altered by chemicals, started or stopped by electricity, and extinguished by a sharp blow or by insufficient oxygen.”

“As we care about more of humanity, we’re apt to mistake the harms around us for signs of how low the world has sunk rather than how high our standards have risen.”