"'Can it be shown that learning our first language, like any other skill, is a personal work of art emerging from the interaction of body and brain, in making one 'common sense' of the world? Through exploring the basic structure and dynamics of language can we rediscover it as the resolution of a creative synthesis?"" In searching for the child's learning secret, or conversely the adult's burden of 'innocence lost," the author explores examples of both everyday skills and scientific knowledge to discover his 'quartet of consciousness." He shows how this quarrelsome four-the artist and...