Steven Pinker's The Better Angels Of Our Nature

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Steven Pinker is a cognitive psychologist. He is an author and excellent Professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University. He is well known for his activism for evolutionary psychology and the computational theory of mind, with a passion and specialization in visual cognition and psycholinguistics. In his book entitled The Better Angels of Our Nature, Pinker argues that regardless of the unending news about terrorism, wars and violence that are occurring nowadays, conflicts have truly been in decline over long stretches of history. The Professor and author Steven Pinker strongly believes that human nature has changed over the years. In fact, he starts his lecture at the University of Edinburgh saying that the era we are experiencing is the most peaceful time in history and that we are living the most pacific time of our species existence. Moreover, with a mixture of psychology and history, Professor Pinker likes to focus on the core of human nature, in order to offer a notable picture of a world always better than it was in the past.
In his lecture, Professor Pinker wants to …show more content…

Pinker argues the abolition of judicial torture in countries such as England, Spain, Portugal, Russia, and United States. He claims the reduction and abolition of death penalty for nonlethal crimes, using as examples England in 18th century and U.S in 17th and 18th centuries. To support his idea, he showed the percentages of how American executions decrease from 1650 to 2002. Moreover, he showed the percentages of how the European executions decreased in the same time period. He adds that there have been other abolitions during the Humanitarian Revolution. These are: witch-hunts, religious persecution, dueling, debtor’s prisons and slavery. Likewise, he concludes saying how literature increase in the “Enlightenment” period, changing people points of view to see life in

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