The Nature of Thought by Steven Pinker Publisher: Zhejiang Science and Technology Press

Introduction
Why do people like to swear when they are excited?
Is a person born with 50,000 concepts?
How are new words created?
How does a concept become popular?
Why do people always hate to speak directly?
Does a person's name have any impact on his life?
Language is closely related to human life. We can use language to convey information and persuade others. Language reflects our understanding of reality. Not only that, it is also the vivid impression we leave on others and the bond that closely connects people.
Steven Pinker's The Nature of Thought will profoundly change your view of language. In this book, Pinker analyzes the true meaning of words and how we should use them; shows how we use space and movement to metaphorically represent more abstract concepts, and reveals the deeper structure of human thought shaped by evolutionary history; also explores the impact of language on emotions and shows us the full power of language. This book tells us how stimulating and interesting language is.
The way we use language contains our assumptions about time, space, events, and causality, as well as the expression of various human emotions and experiences, including negative emotions such as awe, disgust, and fear, as well as positive emotions such as happiness and freedom. These concepts and patterns constitute the simple epistemological framework of human beings, enabling us to understand the world, understand social relations, and engage in social communication.
Pinker combines the two themes of language and human nature, revealing human nature from the perspective of language. Language is not only an expression of thought, but also a display of human nature.
About the Author
Born in Montreal, Canada in 1954, he received a bachelor's degree in psychology from McGill University in 1976 and a Ph.D. in experimental psychology from Harvard University in 1979.
From 1982 to 2003, he taught at the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, devoted himself to studying children's language learning patterns, and eventually became the director of the MIT Center for Cognitive Neuroscience. In 1994, his book The Language Instinct became a sensational bestseller upon its publication, and was selected as one of the "100 Best Science Books of the 20th Century" by American Scientist.
He has been a professor of psychology at Harvard University since 2003. From 2008 to 2013, he was awarded the title of Emeritus Professor of Harvard College.
In 2004, he was selected as one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine. In 2010-2011, he was twice named a top global thinker by Foreign Policy magazine. In 2013, he was ranked third in the "Greatest Thinkers" selection of Prospect magazine. In 2021, according to calculations by the American academic influence website, Pinker was the second most influential psychologist in the world from 2010 to 2020.