Humanist Q&A: Steven Pinker & Joyce Carol Oates
7 Questions for Steven Pinker, 2006 Humanist of the Year
Steven Pinker is a cognitive scientist, psychologist, linguist, popular science author, and Johnstone Family Professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University. He has been recognized by a number of prestigious academic bodies, including the National Academy of Sciences, and was twice a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. His widely acclaimed books include The Blank Slate (2002) and The Better Angels of Our Nature (2011).
Q. The Humanist magazine is turning seventy-five. What do you think of anniversaries generally?
A. Dave Barry wrote that there comes an age when you should stop expecting others to make a fuss over your birthday. That age is eleven. Nonetheless: Happy Birthday, Humanist!
Q. When did you become familiar with the Humanist? Do any past stories, issues, or eras stand out in your mind?
A. Like Molière’s bourgeois gentleman who was delighted to learn that he had been speaking prose all his life, I was delighted to learn that I was a humanist after I published The Blank Slate in 2002 and began to be approached by humanist organizations, particularly the American Humanist Association. It was only after being named Humanist of the Year in 2006 that I had a steady subscription.
Q. What’s your favorite section of any magazine and why?
A. The page where they announce the newest gadgets. How about it, Humanist?
Q. The reports of the death of print journalism seem to have been greatly exaggerated. What’s your preference: Print or online?
A. I switched my newspaper subscriptions from print to digital when I moved to downtown Boston and the delivery service (a mom-and-pop operation that long before had locked in a multi-decade contract) simply couldn’t reliably deliver a single copy of the paper on the days I wanted it rather than several copies or none at all. But with magazines, I’m print-only. I like being able to read them anywhere, and to have visual confirmation of how much I’ve read, which ones await me, and which ones I’ve finished.
Q. Who would you most like to see interviewed in the Humanist?
A. Muslim humanists.
Q. As more and more people stop affiliating with any religion, what can humanism offer, and is organized humanism well positioned to offer it?
A. Humanism has to transcend its high-school-chess-club image and identify itself with larger historic and global movements that people are sympathetic to but don’t identify as “humanistic”—the European Enlightenment, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, classical liberalism, the scientific worldview, and human rights movements worldwide.
Q. Is there anything else you’d like to say to Humanist readers?
A. Try to think of ways to spread humanism to the parts of the world that need it most.
6 Questions for Joyce Carol Oates, 2007 Humanist of the Year
Joyce Carol Oates is the author of over forty novels, as well as a number of plays and novellas, and many volumes of short stories, poetry, and nonfiction. She won the National Book Award for her 1969 novel them, two O. Henry Awards, and the National Humanities Medal. In addition, four of her books have been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. Oates has taught at Princeton University since 1978 and is currently the Roger S. Berlind ’52 Professor in the Humanities with the Program in Creative Writing.
Q. The Humanist magazine is turning seventy-five. What do you think of anniversaries generally?
A. An anniversary is a celebration of survival. In the case of the Humanist, with ceaseless hostility toward humanism and secularism on the part of the quasi-religious right in the United States, that is quite an accomplishment!
Q. When did you become familiar with the Humanist? Do any past stories, issues, or eras stand out in your mind?
A. I have long been aware of the Humanist. … I remember reading issues of the magazine in reading rooms of universities, where the title seemed particularly evocative and inviting, like the title of the Catholic magazine Commonweal—who could possibly not be interested in humanism or in the common weal? I particularly recall excellent articles on Kurt Vonnegut,
Stephen Jay Gould, and Rebecca Goldstein.
Q. What’s your favorite section of any magazine and why?
A. This depends upon the issue of the magazine. Overall, I probably favor the back of the book—reviews.
Q. The reports of the death of print journalism seem to have been greatly exaggerated. What’s your preference: Print or online?
A. Obviously, print. Online reading is expedient and often practical, but book-reading is far more pleasurable. I like to underline as I read, and I have always considered a book to be an aesthetic object and not merely words shimmering in the void.
Q. Who would you most like to see interviewed in the Humanist?
A. So many wonderful people have been interviewed in your pages, it would be difficult to imagine who has not (yet) been singled out for attention… Mary Beard, the English classicist? Jon Stewart, recently retired from the excellent Daily Show? Amy Guttman, president of the University of Pennsylvania?
Q. As more and more people stop affiliating with any religion, what can humanism offer, and is organized humanism well positioned to offer it?
A. Is this so? Islam is the world’s most swiftly growing religion, and Mormonism is enormously successful as well. Their gains are actually quite stunning—sobering even. I don’t have the impression that secularism is gaining ground except within limited circles, like academic circles, at least in the United States. We have a chronic problem with legislating humane laws to control guns and to provide abortion freely and without restraint, closely tied to our “religious” history. I think that our humanism should be extended to animals, to a degree—to the recognition of animals as sentient beings about which our friend and colleague Peter Singer has written so persuasively. By extending our interests and concern for both animals and the environment, which obviously go together, the Humanist would appeal to a broader base of readers.