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Steven Pinker, one of the world’s leading cognitive scientists and author of the best-selling book How the Mind Works, will give a lecture 8 p.m. Tuesday, March 2 in room 104, Kirby Hall of Civil Rights at Lafayette College. The lecture is free and open to the public. No tickets are required. Pinker’s lecture is held under the auspices of the Thomas Roy and Lura Forrest Jones Visiting Lecture series.
In a witty, accessible style peppered with anecdotes and allusions to popular culture, Pinker poses and answers fundamental questions about how the brain functions. Pinker synthesizes the “computational theory of the mind,” which holds that the fundamental activity of the brain is to process information, with the theory of natural selection, which examines the evolution of humans’ reasoning abilities, emotions, and social and sexual behavior.
Pinker is a professor of psychology and director of the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Popular in the mainstream media as well as highly respected in scientific and technical circles, Pinker was named among Newsweek’s “100 Americans for the Next Century” and is included in Esquire’s “Register of Outstanding Men and Women.” He is the author of two best sellers, How the Mind Works and The Language Instinct.
The Thomas Roy and Lura Forrest Jones Visiting Lecture series is Lafayette’s most distinguished visiting lecture program. Past lecturers have included poet Derek Walcott, composer Gunther Schuller, novelist Ursula LeGuin, and black studies scholar Henry Lewis Gates.
For more information, call 610-330-5010.