Pinker gives the example of a student " stubbornly " mishearing the chorus to I'm Your Venus as " I'm Your Penis ," and being surprised that the song was allowed on the radio.

Steven Pinker in The Language Instinct ridiculed this example, claiming that this was a failing of human insight rather than language.

Pinker was born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada in 1954, to a middle-class Jewish family.

Pinker said it was unlikely since the decline in violence happened too rapidly to be explained by genetic changes.

Webb was a stickler for accurate details, and Dragnet used many authentic touches, such as the LAPD's actual radio call sign ( KMA367 ), and the names of many real department officials, such as Ray Pinker and Lee Jones of the crime lab or Chief of Detectives ( and later LAPD Chief from 1967 – 69 ) Thad Brown.

When asked if Summers's talk was " within the pale of legitimate academic discourse ," Pinker responded " Good grief, shouldn't everything be within the pale of legitimate academic discourse, as long as it is presented with some degree of rigor?

Cognitive scientist Steven Pinker notes that the phrase may have originated from this practice, as at this time " cutting off someone's nose was the prototypical act of spite.

As connectionism became increasingly popular in the late 1980s, there was a reaction to it by some researchers, including Jerry Fodor, Steven Pinker and others.

Steven Pinker wrote he " was skeptical that any Englishman made that distinction in the past century.

Sir Christopher Meyer was appointed in 2002 following a brief period of interim chairmanship by Professor Robert Pinker, leaving in 2008.

Pinker writes that if everyone was equal regarding abilities it can be argued that it is only necessary to give everyone equal opportunity.

He went further saying " I was, and remain, perplexed by an attitude of ebullient optimism that ’ s particularly characteristic of Pinker ’ s book.

The CPH was developed further by Pinker ( 1994 ), who proposed that language acquisition is guaranteed during childhood, progressively jeopardized until puberty ends, and is improbable thereafter.

In his next mention, Pinker notes a Tad and Dixie scene: " When Dixie opens the door to Tad, she is stunned, because she thought he was dead ," says Pinker.

Psychologist and cognitive scientist Steven Pinker theorized that, rather than viewing Einstein's ( and other famously gifted late-talking individuals ) adult accomplishments as existing distinct from, or in spite of, his early language deficits, and rather than viewing Einstein's lingual delay itself as a " disorder ", it may be that Einstein's genius and his delay in speaking were developmentally intrinsic to one another.

Steven Pinker, often called the world's leading expert on language and the mind lucidly, is another writer to document Tad and Dixie's romance for one of his examples analyzing the power of words.

Prospect received worldwide attention in October 2005 when it published its list of the world's top 100 public intellectuals, which included Noam Chomsky, Umberto Eco, Richard Dawkins, Steven Pinker and Christopher Hitchens.

Pinker sets out to disabuse the reader of a number of common ideas about language, e. g. that children must be taught to use it, that most people's grammar is poor, that the quality of language is steadily declining, that language has a heavy influence on a person's possible range of thoughts ( the Sapir – Whorf hypothesis ), and that nonhuman animals have been taught language ( see Great Ape language ).

However, other evidence from developmental studies has been presented ( most famously by Pinker, 1994, pp. 37 – 43 ) as supporting a language module, namely the purported dissociation between Specific Language Impairment ( SLI ), where language is disrupted whilst other mental abilities are not ( van der Lely, 2005 ), and Williams Syndrome ( WS ) where language is said to be spared despite severe mental deficits ( Bellugi et al.

Jaynes's theory has been influential to philosophers such as Daniel Dennett, psychologists such as Tim Crow and Steven Pinker, and psychiatrists such as Henry Nasrallah.

In 1989 Pinker and Alan Prince published an influential critique of a connectionist model of the acquisition of the past tense ( a textbook problem in language acquisition ), followed by a series of studies of how people use and acquire the past tense.

In 2001, Paul Allen gathered a group of scientists, including James Watson and Steven Pinker, to discuss the future of neuroscience and what could be done to enhance neuroscience research ( Jones 2009 ).

In 2002, Wright ventured into video-on-Internet with his MeaningofLife. tv website, developed by Greg Dingle, in which he interviews a number of scholars, theologians, scientists and cosmic thinkers about their ideas and opinions regarding religion and spirituality, including Karen Armstrong, Daniel Dennett, Freeman Dyson, and Steven Pinker among others.

* MeaningofLife. tv-Wright's website recording his interviews of noted philosophers and scientists including Daniel Dennett, John Maynard Smith, Steven Pinker, John Polkinghorne, and Francis Fukuyama

Some scientists, including MIT linguist Noam Chomsky and cognitive scientist Steven Pinker, are skeptical about claims made for great ape language research.

Steven Pinker writes that the book's authors use words such as " determinism " and " reductionism " as " vague terms of abuse ", and misrepresent the views of scientists such as Edward O. Wilson and Richard Dawkins, falsely ascribing ridiculous beliefs to them.

Many Christians do not agree on an exact definition of " dignity ," which leads some scientists to ignore this concern, seeing it as a vague excuse that some Christians use to justify cloning bans Or, if a definition is agreed upon, it may be challenged as being too weak, so that, according to Steven Pinker, a Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, it is " hardly up to the heavyweight moral demands assigned to it.

According to psychologist and cognitive scientist Steven Pinker, our experiences of the world are represented in our minds as mental images.

This stems from Gould's long-running public debate with E. O. Wilson and other evolutionary biologists over human sociobiology and its descendant evolutionary psychology, which Gould and Richard Lewontin opposed, but which Dennett advocated, together with Dawkins and Steven Pinker.

On May 13, 2006, Pinker received the American Humanist Association's Humanist of the Year award for his contributions to public understanding of human evolution.

Cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker has argued that the game theoretic advantages of ethical behavior support the idea that morality is " out there " in a certain sense ( as part of the evolutionary fitness landscape ).

In January 2005, Pinker defended Lawrence Summers, President of Harvard University, whose comments about a gender gap in mathematics and science angered much of the faculty.

Steven Pinker in 2005

Stimulated by this controversy, in May 2005, Harvard University psychology professors Steven Pinker and Elizabeth Spelke debated " The Science of Gender and Science ".

The counterargument is that there appears to be something ‘ special ’ ( Pinker & Jackendoff, 2005 ) about human language.

Instead of postulating ' pure ' modularity, theorists have opted for a weaker version, domain-specificity implemented in functionally specialised neural circuits and computation ( e. g. Jackendoff and Pinker ’ s ( 2005 ) words, we must investigate language “ not as a monolith but as a combination of components, some special to language, others rooted in more general capacities ” ( p. 223 ).

Jackendoff, R. & Pinker, S. ( 2005 ) The nature of the language faculty and its implications for evolution of language ( Reply to Fitch, Hauser, & Chomsky ) Cognition, 97 ( 2 ), 211-225.

Pinker, S., & Jackendoff, R. ( 2005 ).

* 2005 Dr. Steven Pinker for The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature, addressing the fears associated with acknowledging a universal, biologically based human nature.

* In Depth interview with Pinker, November 2, 2008

* Steven Pinker, USA ( 2008 )