The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature | 
 enlarge | Author: Steven Pinker
Publisher: Viking Adult
Category: Book
List Price: $29.95
Buy New: $11.99
You Save: $17.96 (60%)
New (43) Used (19) from $11.99
Avg. Customer Rating:  31 reviews
Sales Rank: 7070
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 512
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.7
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.4 x 1.7
ISBN: 0670063274
Dewey Decimal Number: 401
EAN: 9780670063277
ASIN: 0670063274
Publication Date: September 11, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
|
| Also Available In:
|
| Similar Items:
|
| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
New York Times bestselling author Steven Pinker possesses that rare combination of scientific aptitude and verbal eloquence that enables him to provide lucid explanations of deep and powerful ideas. His previous booksincluding the Pulitzer Prize finalist The Blank Slatehave catapulted him into the limelight as one of todays most important and popular science writers.
Now, in The Stuff of Thought, Pinker marries two of the subjects he knows best: language and human nature. The result is a fascinating look at how our words explain our nature. What does swearing reveal about our emotions? Why does innuendo disclose something about relationships? Pinker reveals how our use of prepositions and tenses taps into peculiarly human concepts of space and time, and how our nouns and verbs speak to our notions of matter. Even the names we give our babies have important things to say about our relations to our children and to society.
With his signature wit and style, Pinker takes on scientific questions like whether language affects thought, as well as forays into everyday lifewhy is bulk e-mail called spam and how do romantic comedies get such mileage out of the ambiguities of dating? The Stuff of Thought is a brilliantly crafted and highly readable work that will appeal to fans of readers of everything from The Selfish Gene and Blink to Eats, Shoots & Leaves.
|
| Customer Reviews: Read 26 more reviews...
Insightful, but broad at the expense of depth July 17, 2008
Pinker makes a very good case for neo-Kantianism based on liguistics. In a nutshell, we humans are hardwired to categorized our experience in certain ways.
His arugument for this is based on the observation that children make some very subtle linguistic distinctions in cases for which they could not possibly have had enough exposure for learning from experience.
My only complaint is that I wish he had gone deeper on this particular issue instead of giving us a broad catalog of language traits.
Not quite as great as some of Mr. Pinker's other books July 15, 2008
I have read some of Prof. Pinker's books (How the mind works, the language instinct, the blank slate), and I bought this one only because those books were phantastic!
The stuff of thought was not that interesting to me. It seemed more "technical" to me, particularly the first chapter. It got better, but never reached e.g. "How the Mind Works".
Still, Prof. Pinker can write! The same subject by anybody else would have been very boring.
I guess, only Richard Dawkins is a match for Steven Pinker.
It is definitely worth reading! I only deducted one star relative to his previous books!
 Too Stuffy for my Thoughts July 13, 2008
I admire Steven Pinker and have heard him present his work in one of the most interesting, educational, and entertaining presentations. Having 4 of his books puts me in the category of major fan. I was astounded at the brilliance of insight presented here, but just could not follow it, so gave up after Chapter 2. I spot checked a few of the later chapters, finding too much minutia for me to comprehend. I am astounded that one human mind can understand so much and write a book like this, but I am far from the target market.
I recommend this book only if you want a deep, detailed understanding of the subject. Although this was beyond my comprehension, in my defense I'll point out that I enjoy science books and have an above average number of doctoral degrees (two).
Unfortunately misguided amid amusing anecdotes March 5, 2008
6 out of 19 found this review helpful
It was my intention to mark the book for at least three stars, because of its many entertaining jokes, cartoons, quotations and linguistic quirks, whatever my estimation of the rest of the content. But on reaching chapter 7 on obscenities, I couldn't make myself mark a third star. Perhaps I haven't read much of recent concerned literature in finding the chapter surprising, but I definitely reject the author's thinking there is nothing wrong with his flagrant use of "taboo" language.
The author reasons (p.19): "...the phenomenon [meaning the disapproval] of taboo language is an affront to common sense. Excretion is an activity that every incarnate being must engage in daily, yet all the English words for it are indecent, juvenile, or clinical". The taboo words are of course the indecent ones. And (p.20): "No curious person can fail to be puzzled by the illogic and hypocrisy of linguistic taboos. Why should certain words, but not their homonyms or synonyms, be credited with a dreadful moral power?"
Ironically he observes elsewhere that taboo words carry certain offensive connotations, and even admits they should be avoided on occasions. But his defense in principle of them lacks the logic he talks about. Excretion, for instance, has, in contrast to nutrition, unpleasant odors, etc., and the taboo language for it connotes its objectionable aspects. The same holds for taboo words in general, and thus there is good reason for avoiding them.
However, I do not wish to dwell on this topic, but concentrate on the author's logic in more critical areas. It also enters politics, where his reasoning is evidently biased and where I don't wish to tread, not desiring associated polemics. My attention rather is more on his logic per se, alongside his use of it for fundamental causal laws.
He faults Hume's famed description of causation, quoting (p.211) Hume's passage (I corrected some punctuation in keeping with the original): "we may define a cause to be an object, followed by another, and where all the objects similar to the first are followed by objects similar to the second. Or in other words where, if the first object had not been, the second never had existed" (An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (The Clarendon Edition of the Works of David Hume)). Hume committed in his second sentence the fallacy of "denying the antecedent"; from "A implies B" does not follow "not-A implies not-B".
The reviewed author, however, seizes on that sentence as "an improvement over the constant-conjunction theory". He along with other referenced authors elaborates it into a "counterfactual theory of causation", invoking a fantastic infinity of "possible worlds". The reason for this elaboration is that the authors mistakenly interpret "not-A implies not-B" as contradicting the "fact" of A. But these don't concern facts, but rules. "Not-A implies not-B" doesn't follow from "A implies B", but not-A can be as much part of this world as can A.
The real trouble is that inference. If A causes B, it doesn't follow that B cannot happen without A. The author keeps saying that only striking the match will make it burn. How wrong; it will burn if you hold it to any fire. "There is more than one way to skin a cat."
He, not quite satisfied, brings further with other authors force or power into the action (p.217), insisting that Hume's conjunction of events is inadequate. Hume, however, was fully aware of "force" or "power" or "energy", his very point having been that these cannot be observed outside the conjunction of events. The author persistently complains that many events follow each other but are not causally connected, as if Hume had been ignorant of this. Our experiences are very rich, and even animals become discriminatory in apprehending what event brings about another.
To give one more illustration of the author's faulty logic, he mentions (p.214) the transitive law, "if A causes B, and B causes C, then A causes C". He then decides (p.223) that since "our concept of causation [is] based on intuitive physics, rather than a formula in formal logic, it needn't respect logical necessities such as transitivity. If...A launches...B, which is then stopped by...C, there is no reason to conceive of A as impinging on C at all". But B, meant in transitivity to be caused by A, is here not the likewise meant cause of C. If it were, A indeed would cause C. Logical laws, like mathematical ones, are universal.
Aside from the preceding, most of this tome of over 500 pages consists of pointless inventories of linguistic usage, lightened, as indicated, by comic relief. To me the numerous linguistic theories of various authors cited in the book are wasted, since linguistic forms, as is recognized, are arbitrary.
Allow me to mention that I discuss all these issues extensively in On Proof for Existence of God, and Other Reflective Inquiries.
 Insight through language February 28, 2008
In his recent book, "The Stuff of Thought", author Steven Pinker makes a compelling case for hypocrisy being a vital habit in human conversation. His chapter "Games People Play" argues that hypocrisy furnishes us with a means to ease our ways through conversations in which we face potentially awkward or risk-filled circumstances. He therefore argues that hypocrisy is a necessary value in the evolution of the human species. As a professor of Linguistics and Psychology at Harvard, and the author of six previous books linking these disciplines, Steve Pinker ought to know.
But can we be entirely sure that the popular and prolific professor
actually does know what is quintessentially true about hypocrisy? I
confess that, in my heart, I want him to be quite in error on this subject, but not because I have been guiltless in never having indulged in hypocrisy. I want to find him in error on this question because, now in my sixties and a coach in the development of productive authenticity, I feel exceedingly uncomfortable either witnessing or indulging in hypocrisy, and indeed believe it is a monumentally slippery slope to disaster and perdition in human evolution.
But, given Pinker's academic authority, is my wanting him to be in error just wooly Pollyanna-like fantasy? The issue is critical for each of us to face and decide because hypocrisy is hard to distinguish from deliberate deception. This being so, our condoning deliberate deception in the generous assumption that it is merely "hypocrisy of a commendably easing kind", exposes all of us as a society to the risk that we may be casually enabling mild deception to become a habit that will grow into dangerously deliberate deception.
This issue does not overhang the entire book, however. No, the author has given what could be heavy and complex material frequent injections of delightful humour and penetrating wit. Linguists will, of course, love his breathtaking summations of recent linguistic and psychological research into what language and languages can tell us of the essential nature of the human mind. But, if you want to play your part in the pulling of human nature up from its primitive roots to a better potential future for planetary citizenship in which English will continue to be a potently vital force, or even if you only want to survive in a world of sharp users of English, you too will enjoy it.
|
|
|
