Language, Cognition, and Human Nature: Selected Articles

ISBN-13: 9780199328741 / Angielski / Twarda / 2013 / 392 str.

Steven Pinker

Opis

Language, Cognition, and Human Nature collects together for the first time much of Steven Pinker's most influential scholarly work on language and cognition. Pinker's seminal research explores the workings of language and its connections to cognition, perception, social relationships, child development, human evolution, and theories of human nature.

This eclectic collection spans Pinker's thirty-year career, exploring his favorite themes in greater depth and scientific detail. It includes thirteen of Pinker's classic articles, ranging over topics such as language development in children, mental imagery, the recognition of shapes, the computational architecture of the mind, the meaning and uses of verbs, the evolution of language and cognition, the nature-nurture debate, and the logic of innuendo and euphemism. Each outlines a major theory or takes up an argument with another prominent scholar, such as Stephen Jay Gould, Noam Chomsky, or Richard Dawkins. Featuring a new introduction by Pinker that discusses his books and scholarly work, this collection reflects essential contributions to cognitive science by one of our leading thinkers and public intellectuals.

Recenzje

This collection brings together Pinker's most significant scholarly work across his considerable thirty-year academic career, representing the first time that the full scope of his work has been compiled within a single volume... Overall, it is highly representational of the core of Pinker's thought and provides a good overview of Pinker's career to date... an interesting and compelling read.

O autorze

Steven Pinker is the Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, an eminent cognitive scientist, and the author of many popular books that synthesize large bodies of knowledge of cognitive science, evolutionary biology, and behavioral genetics into a comprehensive picture of how the mind works, how it evolved, and how we ought to bring these ideas to bear on theories of politics and morality. His scholarly work has won many prizes, including the Troland Award from the National Academy of Sciences, the Henry Dale Prize from the Royal Institution of Great Britain, the George Miller Prize from the Cognitive Neuroscience Society, and the Early Career Award and McCandless Prize from the American Psychological Association. He is Chair of the Usage Panel of the American Heritage Dictionary, and also writes frequently in the popular press, including The New York Times, Prospect, Slate, and The New Republic.