In his new book, Steven Pinker, one of the world’s most renowned specialists in the neurosciences and the author of The Language Instinct, studies the human mind. What is it? How did it evolve? How does it enable us to see, think, feel, laugh, interact with others, have aesthetic experiences, and reflect on our own lives? Writing with the elegance, humour, and expertise that The Language Instinct has accustomed us to, Pinker now gives us a comprehensive survey of everything that is known today about the mind. How does he proceed? First of all, he tries to trace how evolution has moulded our minds to enable us to face the environment our ancestors lived in. But he also addresses some more unexpected questions about our daily lives which are often amusing and always highly relevant: Why are we seduced by a face with makeup? Why does eating worms seem disgusting to us? Why do people who are mentally ill fall in love? Why do art and music have a soothing effect? In his description of the human mind, Pinker reasserts the value of certain notions that have ceased to be popular: for example, that the brain functions much like a computer, or that human nature is the product of evolution. But he ridicules others: that emotions are irrational, that parents are responsible for socialising their children, that creativity springs from the unconscious, that nature is good and pure and society corrupts, and that art and religion are the highest expression of human spirituality. This is the long-awaited synthesis encompassing all the major explanations offered by evolutionary biology and the cognitive sciences concerning mental life of human beings.

Steven Pinker heads the Center of Cognitive Neurosciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He formerly taught psychology at Harvard and Stanford, and holds degrees from McGill University and Harvard. He is the author of the highly acclaimed Language Instinct, which has been translated into many languages and has been praised as a model of scientific popularisation.