Pinker is an evolutionary psychologist; it’s his métier. I don’t know on what grounds you say that “only one” of the three books mentioned is considered a work of evolutionary psychology (I don’t even know which one of the three you mean! -- I’m guessing How The Mind Works?); but in any case, given Pinker’s reputation for advocating evolutionary psychology, it is extraordinarily unlikely that Dawkins would have praised Pinker in those terms if he (Dawkins) shared your view that the subject is pseudoscience. The quote strongly implies that Dawkins holds a view of evolutionary psychology that is drastically different from yours, which I don’t think you anticipated. Update!
No, I meant Blank Slate as the one of three which is ev.psych. I haven’t read How the Mind Works but assumed from the title that it is into the mechanism of mind rather than its evolutionary origin. I read most of The Language Instinct and formed the impression that it too was mostly about mechanism rather than origins. But I will take your word for it (and Tim’s word) that I was wrong.
“In this extraordinary book, Steven Pinker, one of the world’s leading cognitive scientists, does for the rest of the mind what he did for language in his 1994 bestseller The Language Instinct. He explains what the mind is, how it evolved, and how it allows us to see, think, feel, laugh, interact, enjoy the arts, and ponder the mysteries of life. And he does it with the wit, clarity, and verve that earned The Language Instinct, worldwide critical acclaim and awards from major scientific societies.”
Similar blurb from “The Language Instinct”:
“With wit, erudition, and deft use of everyday examples of humor and wordplay, Pinker weaves our vast knowledge of language into a compelling theory: that language is a human instinct, wired into our brains by evolution like web-spinning in spiders or sonar in bats.
The theory not only challenges convention wisdom about language itself (especially from the self-appointed “experts” who claim to be safeguarding the language but who understand it less well than a typical teenager). It is part of a whole new vision of the human mind: not a general-purpose computer, but a collection of instincts adapted to solving evolutionarily significant problems—the mind as a Swiss Army knife.”
Pinker is an evolutionary psychologist; it’s his métier. I don’t know on what grounds you say that “only one” of the three books mentioned is considered a work of evolutionary psychology (I don’t even know which one of the three you mean! -- I’m guessing How The Mind Works?); but in any case, given Pinker’s reputation for advocating evolutionary psychology, it is extraordinarily unlikely that Dawkins would have praised Pinker in those terms if he (Dawkins) shared your view that the subject is pseudoscience. The quote strongly implies that Dawkins holds a view of evolutionary psychology that is drastically different from yours, which I don’t think you anticipated. Update!
No, I meant Blank Slate as the one of three which is ev.psych. I haven’t read How the Mind Works but assumed from the title that it is into the mechanism of mind rather than its evolutionary origin. I read most of The Language Instinct and formed the impression that it too was mostly about mechanism rather than origins. But I will take your word for it (and Tim’s word) that I was wrong.
Updated.
Back cover blurb from “How the Mind Works”:
“In this extraordinary book, Steven Pinker, one of the world’s leading cognitive scientists, does for the rest of the mind what he did for language in his 1994 bestseller The Language Instinct. He explains what the mind is, how it evolved, and how it allows us to see, think, feel, laugh, interact, enjoy the arts, and ponder the mysteries of life. And he does it with the wit, clarity, and verve that earned The Language Instinct, worldwide critical acclaim and awards from major scientific societies.”
Similar blurb from “The Language Instinct”:
“With wit, erudition, and deft use of everyday examples of humor and wordplay, Pinker weaves our vast knowledge of language into a compelling theory: that language is a human instinct, wired into our brains by evolution like web-spinning in spiders or sonar in bats.
The theory not only challenges convention wisdom about language itself (especially from the self-appointed “experts” who claim to be safeguarding the language but who understand it less well than a typical teenager). It is part of a whole new vision of the human mind: not a general-purpose computer, but a collection of instincts adapted to solving evolutionarily significant problems—the mind as a Swiss Army knife.”