Third, a word about The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature [PINKER 2007]. Having destroyed the SSSM, Pinker is obliged to provide his concept of human nature as a basis for an alternative Social Science Model. Having geared up with two previous books on language - The Language Instinct [PINKER 1994] and Words and Rules: The Ingredients of Language [PINKER 1999], he is now ready to look through the window of language into human nature. What does he see? We learned above that the nervous system mediates between the internal and external environments to enable us to survive by approaching things which are good for us and avoiding things which are bad for us. However language serves as a mediator between our internal and external environments to not merely survive but to thrive. We are able to satisfy not only our biological needs, as argued by behaviorists, but also our sociological and psychological needs, as argued by humanists.

      We are natural-born scientists. Science involves observation and reason. Every language contains the concepts of time and space, cause and effect, as the basis for observation. "The mind isn't a blank slate, but it isn't an overstuffed filing cabinet either" (Jonah Lehrer). It does not contain innate ideas of Hula Hoops and iPhones, but of time and space, cause and effect since those are the basic dimensions of the physical world. John Roberts, an anthropologist on my thesis committee, translated the test of propositional logic I used in my Ph. D. thesis into all the North American Indian languages he knew. He discovered that every language has all the logical operators - if -then, either - or, etc. - required for logic. That is, language contains the means for reason.