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The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature
by: Steven Pinker

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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 302
EAN: 9780143114246
ISBN: 0143114247
Label: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Manufacturer: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 512
Publication Date: August 26, 2008
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Sales Rank: 3285
Studio: Penguin (Non-Classics)

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Editorial Review:

Product Description:
This New York Times bestseller is an exciting and fearless investigation of language

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 books—including the Pulitzer Prize finalist The Blank Slate—have catapulted him into the limelight as one of today’s most important popular science writers. In The Stuff of Thought, Pinker presents a fascinating look at how our words explain our nature. Considering scientific questions with examples from everyday life, The Stuff of Thought is a brilliantly crafted and highly readable work that will appeal to fans of everything from The Selfish Gene and Blink to Eats, Shoots & Leaves.

Customer Reviews

Average Rating: out of 5 stars

Rating:

- Worthwhile, but could have been shorter
There were things I liked about "The Stuff of Thought" and things I didn't. I would have preferred the book to be shorter. I certainly could take away many profound observations. However, I don't think Pinker had to go into so many examples, although I am sure many readers will like that. Anyway, here are some important things which I will remember from the book.

1. We can learn a lot about people from the way they put together words. Pinker shows many examples.

2. What is an event? 9-11 was an event, however there were also many events which went into effecting it.

3. Words take on new meanings to reflect on how the world works.

4. Learning a language is really a remarkable process. Pinker discredits linguistic determination, that is the brain learning language to generate thinking. He asserts that thoughts effect language. Meanings are stored, not the exact combination ... Read More

Rating:

- A bible for any creator of an artificial language
Not having read the whole book yet, but being in the process, and having been asked by Amazon to write a review; ...

... In reading the book, I am being overloaded with tons of interesting language- thought correspondences and their opposites, which one just does not think about when one just speaks a language and, indeed, when one "just" learns another one. There are so many logical extras to language, which non linguists never think about. But if you want to create a language, this book would be one that you would have to know backwards; like a conscientious christian knows his bible. Without this book it will be very hard to make your artificial language consice and better than the natural languages, and then, your artificial language, your creation, will just be another one in the long line of failed artificial languages.

Rating:

- Fascinating, deep, and satisfying
In his inimitably thoughtful and engaging style, Pinker explains the field of conceptual semantics to the lay reader, and shows what modern theoretical linguistics reveals about how human beings think. The book is in some sense an integration of Pinker's previous books The Language Instinct, Words and Rules, and How the Mind Works.

Human thought, Pinker argues, is built around certain primitive concepts, including space, force, dominance, agency, animacy, sex, and contamination. In the most interesting chapters he shows how our human conceptions of space, time, and matter are reflected in linguistic features like tense, aspect, and the count/mass distinction. The relatively recent research results of Beth Levin and her colleagues in the area of lexical semantics, summarized in Chapter 2, are particularly illuminating, as they reveal how seemingly random variations in verb subcategorization patterns actually reflect ... Read More

Rating:

- Evolution of language
Being a newcomer to the analysis and debate of linguistics, the opening parts of the book felt a little heavy - Pinker assumes a certain level of knowledge of the topic area. Having said that, I am glad I persisted as I later found many interesting parallels to the study of NLP (Natural Language Processing) in the computer science community, and eventually the 'academic' is replaced with hundreds of references and insightful case studies on how we use our language, why we structure it the way we do, and what it says about us.

The book really picks up in the latter half as Pinker picks apart numerous examples of our speech, and life situations (politics, power, sex, and so on), and explains the language and foundation behind it. Linguistics offers a fascinating perspective on how our minds operate, and this is a great introduction. I am looking forward to reading more about the topic in the feature.

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