# The Blank Slate **Opening (not a real abstract):** Steven Pinker is Johnstone Professor of Psychology at Harvard University. His research on visual cognition and the psychology of language has earned prizes from the National Academy of Sciences and the American Psychological Association. Pinker has also received many awards for his teaching at MIT and for his books How the Mind Works (which was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize) and The Language Instinct. He is an elected fellow of several scientific societies, associate editor of Cognition, and a member of the usage panel of the American Heritage Dictionary. He has written for The New York Times, Time, The New Yorker, The New Republic, Slate, and Technology Review. **Authors:** [[PENGUIN BOOKS]]