Steven Pinker on Thomas Sowell

Steven Pinker, the influential Harvard psychologist, developed an appreciation for the work of Thomas Sowell, a black economist noted for his skepticism of progressive race policy. I learned this while reading Jason Riley’s Maverick, a biography of Sowell.

Riley writes:

Pinker is more liberal than Sowell politically, but he told me that reading A Conflict of Visions, The Vision of the Anointed, The Quest for Cosmic Justice, and other Sowell works gave him a deeper and more useful understanding of the conservative thought process. “For me, it was something of a revelation,” he said. “Spending my adult life in the kind of liberal cocoon of Cambridge, Massachusetts, I had never really seen a careful exposition of a number of views associated with the right and often, I think, misunderstood and caricatured by the left.” Pinker said he was “never tremendously political in the first place,” but he thought he “became more politically eclectic” after reading Sowell. In particular, he “became more sympathetic to the rationale behind market economies.”

I’ve read the full bibliographies of these men, and this anecdote reinforces my appreciation for both. I’m also a fan of Jason Riley and read his column in the Wall Street Journal every week.

Eric Shierman lives in Salem and is the author of We were winning when I was there.