Steven Pinker’s new book, The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature, is a 500-page exploration of the way the mind negotiates reality. Pinker, who conducts research on language and cognition as a psychology professor at Harvard, exposes how language reveals the way humans perceive space, time, and causality.

William Saletan writes in the New York Times Book Review:

“The Stuff of Thought explores the duality of human cognition: the modesty of its construction and the majesty of its constructive power. Pinker weaves this paradox from a series of opposing theories. Philosophical realists, for instance, think perception comes from reality. Idealists think it’s all in our heads. Pinker says it comes from reality but is organized and reorganized by the mind. That’s why you can look at the same thing in different ways.”

NYAS members can read an excerpt from the book in the current edition of the New York Academy of Sciences Member Magazine. Or buy a signed copy of the book this week at the Academy:

Pinker will speak Friday, October 5, at 6 pm at The New York Academy of Sciences, 250 Greenwich St., 7 World Trade Center, in lower Manhattan. The event marks the launch of the Science & the City Author Series.