Steven Pinker, a Renowned Scientist of the Mind, to Lecture on the History of Violence at UCSB's SAGE Center for the Study of the Mind

The SAGE Center for the Study of the Mind at UC Santa Barbara will present renowned Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker in a free public lecture on the "History of Violence" on Friday, Jan. 23, at 4 p.m. in Campbell Hall.

Pinker, a leading researcher in language and cognition, has been named one of Time magazine's 100 most influential people.

A dynamic and entertaining speaker, Pinker will explore a hypothesis that challenges a conventional belief that we live in the most violent time in history.

He argues that our ancestors were far more violent than we are today, that violence has been in decline for long stretches of time, and that now we are probably living in the most peaceful time in our species' existence.

Pinker is the Johnstone Family Professor at Harvard.

He has published six best-selling books written for a general audience, including "The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature," "The Language Instinct," "How the Mind Works," "Words and Rules: The Ingredients of Language," and "The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature."

A recipient of numerous prizes and awards for his critically acclaimed books, he also frequently writes for the New York Times, Time, and Slate on subjects such as language and politics, the neural basis of consciousness, and the genetic enhancement of human beings.

Most recently, he was the author of last Sunday's New York Times Magazine cover story on genetic identity titled "My Genome, My Self."

Pinker was named one of Time Magazine's 100 most influential people in 2004 and one of Prospect and Foreign Policy's 100 top public intellectuals in 2005.

His experimental research on cognition and language won the Troland Award from the National Academy of Sciences and two prizes from the American Psychological Association.

UCSB's SAGE Center for the Study of the Mind brings together scholars from a broad range of academic disciplines to explore the multidimensional nature of the human mind.

Issued: 1/15/2009; Corrected: 1/15/2009

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