Steven Pinker – författare

Vad är det för fel på folk?

Vi föds med ofattbart avancerade hjärnor, anpassade för att ständigt lära sig nya saker om världen. Vår tillgång till kunskap är större än någonsin. Ändå fastnar många av oss i faktaresistens och konspirationsteorier.

I sin nya bok argumenterar Steven Pinker för att det rationella resonemanget kan göra världen bättre, på nästan alla sätt. Med intellektuell precision och en stor dos humor visar han varför våra felbara hjärnor ibland går vilse, men också hur medvetna strategier kan göra oss mer rationella.

One of the world's greatest thinkers investigates the logic and psychology of common knowledge As a cognitive scientist, the ultimate subject of Steven Pinker's fascination is how we think about each other's thoughts, ad infinitum. It sounds impossible, but Steven Pinker shows that we do it all the time. This awareness, which we experience as something that is public or "out there," is called common knowledge, and it has a momentous impact on our social, political, and economic lives.Common knowledge, Pinker shows, can make sense of many of life's enigmas: financial bubbles and crashes, revolutions that come out of nowhere, the posturing and pretence of diplomacy, the eruption of social media shaming mobs and academic cancel culture, the awkwardness of a first date. But people also go to great lengths to avoid common knowledge-to ensure that even if everyone knows something, they can't know that everyone else knows they know it. And so we get rituals like benign hypocrisy, veiled bribes and threats, sexual innuendo, and pretending not to see the elephant in the room.In exploring the paradoxes of human behaviour, When Everyone Knows that Everyone Knows... invites us to understand the ways we try to get into each other's heads, and the harmonies, hypocrisies, and outrages that result.

Hur uppfattar du andras sätt att tänka? Och hur uppfattar andra hur du tänker? Vårt vetande skapas i grupp, och det vi kallar gemensam kunskap formas både av vad vi föreställer oss att andra vill veta, och vad vi tror att andra vill veta. Vi tänker i grupp, som en grupp, och vi tänker utifrån hur vi tänker att andra tänker. Tack vare teorin om gemensam kunskap kan vi förstå hur politisk makt, humor och finansiella marknader fungerar, samt oräkneliga egenheter i privatlivet och det offentliga såsom finansbubblor, börskrascher, vredesutbrott i trafiken, utdragna avsked, revolutioner, mobbning på sociala medier och akademisk cancelkultur. Steven Pinker har med ett flertal bästsäljare utmärkt sig som en av världens främsta populärvetenskapliga författare, där den mänskliga kulturen och tänkandet alltid står i centrum för hans originella, tankeväckande och underhållande analyser. Med När alla vet att alla vet har Pinker överträffat sig själv med en bok som kommer att förändra din uppfattning av världen på ett sätt du inte visste att du var intresserad av att förstå.

Is modernity really failing? Or have we failed to appreciate progress and the ideals that make it possible? If you follow the headlines, the world in the 21st century appears to be sinking into chaos, hatred and irrationality. Yet, as Steven Pinker shows, if you follow the trendlines, you discover that our lives have become longer, healthier, safer and more prosperous - not just in the West, but worldwide. Such progress is no accident: it's the gift of a coherent value system that many of us embrace without even realizing it. These are the values of the Enlightenment: of reason, science, humanism and progress. The challenges we face today are formidable. But the way to deal with them is not to sink into despair or try to lurch back to a mythical idyllic past; it's to treat them as problems we can solve, as we have solved other problems in the past. This is the case for an Enlightenment newly recharged for the 21st century.

The classic book on the development of human language by the world’s leading expert on language and the mind.

In this classic, the world''s expert on language and mind lucidly explains everything you always wanted to know about language: how it works, how children learn it, how it changes, how the brain computes it, and how it evolved. With deft use of examples of humor and wordplay, Steven Pinker weaves our vast knowledge of language into a compelling story: language is a human instinct, wired into our brains by evolution. The Language Instinct received the William James Book Prize from the American Psychological Association and the Public Interest Award from the Linguistics Society of America. This edition includes an update on advances in the science of language since The Language Instinct was first published.

Brought to you by Penguin.Is modernity really failing? Or have we failed to appreciate progress and the ideals that make it possible?If you follow the headlines, the world in the 21st century appears to be sinking into chaos, hatred and irrationality. Yet, as Steven Pinker shows, if you follow the trendlines, you discover that our lives have become longer, healthier, safer and more prosperous - not just in the West but worldwide.Such progress is no accident: it''s the gift of a coherent value system that many of us embrace without even realising it. These are the values of the Enlightenment: of reason, science, humanism and progress. The challenges we face today are formidable. But the way to deal with them is not to sink into despair or try to lurch back to a mythical idyllic past; it''s to treat them as problems we can solve, as we have solved other problems in the past. This is the case for an Enlightenment newly recharged for the 21st century.PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio on our desktop site.© Steven Pinker 2018 (P) Penguin Audio 2018

Brought to you by Penguin.Recently many people have assumed that we are blank slates shaped by our environment. But this denies the heart of our being: human nature. Violence is not just a product of society; male and female minds are different; the genes we give our children shape them more than our parenting practices. To acknowledge our innate abilities, Pinker shows, is not to condone inequality, but to understand the very foundations of humanity.''A passionate defence of the enduring power of human nature ... both life-affirming and deeply satisfying'' Daily Telegraph''Brilliant ... enjoyable, informative, clear, humane'' New Scientist''Startling ... This is a breath of air for a topic that has been politicized for too long'' Economist©2003 Steven Pinker (P)2019 Penguin Audio

Brought to you by Penguin.What is the secret of good prose? Does writing well even matter in an age of instant communication? Should we care? In this funny, thoughtful book about the modern art of writing, Steven Pinker shows us why we all need a sense of style.More than ever before, the currency of our social and cultural lives is the written word, from Twitter and texting to blogs, e-readers and old-fashioned books. But most style guides fail to prepare people for the challenges of writing in the 21st century, portraying it as a minefield of grievous errors rather than a form of pleasurable mastery. They fail to deal with an inescapable fact about language: it changes over time, adapted by millions of writers and speakers to their needs. Confusing changes in the world with moral decline, every generation believes the kids today are degrading society and taking language with it. A guide for the new millennium, writes Steven Pinker, has to be different.Drawing on the latest research in linguistics and cognitive science, Steven Pinker replaces the recycled dogma of previous style guides with reason and evidence. This thinking person''s guide to good writing shows why style still matters: in communicating effectively, in enhancing the spread of ideas, in earning a reader''s trust and, not least, in adding beauty to the world. Eye-opening, mind-expanding and cheerful, The Sense of Style shows that good style is part of what it means to be human.Winner, Plain English Campaign''s International Award 2014: ''a superbly and clearly written celebration of the best, least fuzzy kind of writing.''©2014 Steven Pinker (P)2019 Penguin Audio