Science Quote by Steven Pinker

Pinker’s line is a quiet provocation dressed up as a status report: after decades in which the humanities and social sciences tried to treat “human nature” as either an embarrassment or an ideological trap, he’s claiming it’s returning under scientific escort. The phrase “back into the picture” is doing a lot of work. It frames the 20th-century suspicion of innate tendencies as a kind of cropping error, an omission that distorted the whole image. Pinker isn’t merely cheering evolutionary psychology; he’s positioning it as part of a broader coalition (the “four sciences”) that can re-legitimize talking about what people are like, not just what institutions make them.

The subtext is a turf battle: if human behavior has deep roots, then any account that treats culture as infinitely malleable starts to look incomplete. Pinker’s rhetorical restraint matters here. He doesn’t say “human nature proves X” or “culture is irrelevant.” He says “bringing... back,” implying restoration rather than revolution, repair rather than conquest. That softens the charge that evolutionary psychology smuggles politics in through biology.

Contextually, this fits Pinker’s long campaign against what he has called “blank slate” thinking and against academic taboos around heredity, sex differences, and aggression. It’s also a preemptive defense: by embedding evolutionary psychology within a set of sciences, he’s trying to launder a controversial field through association with more established neighbors (cognitive science, behavioral genetics, neuroscience often sit nearby). The intent isn’t just explanatory; it’s permission-giving. He’s arguing that discussing human nature isn’t reactionary by default - it’s overdue, and now it has instruments.