Steven Pinker is a professor of psychology at Harvard University and one of the world’s leading authorities on language and the mind. Initially focusing his work on experimental psychology and language acquisition in children, Pinker eventually turned his attention to language and politics, the neural basis of consciousness, and the decline in violence worldwide over the past several decades. His most recent book, “Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, and Why It Matters,”” discusses human instincts for logic and norms that are explicitly designed to promote objectivity and truth. Pinker has been named one of Foreign Policy’s “World’s Top 100 Intellectuals” and one of Time’s “100 Most Influential People in the World Today.”