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:
Avg. Customer Rating: 4.0 / 5.0
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... more info
Always Educational:
Steven Pinker is one of the greatest minds we have. The Blank Slate is on my top 20 lifetime list for books and I've enjoyed seeing him in interviews (and one outstanding debate) online. The Stuff of Thought unfortunately is fairly pedestrian by his standards. To me, this book was far more about language than it was human nature or psychology. As far as linguistics is concerned readers learn much but the same cannot be said in terms of it providing a window into our souls. Some of the wordplay was... more info
Lacks 'stuff' on the physiological and cognitive origins of language:
Although Pinker is renown in the field of linguistics, I was a bit disappointed with the single sidedness of this book. In it, he examines the origins of the English language, but to a large degree fails to introduce the factors attributing to the physiological and cognitive results from the birth of language. I anticipated a book with more in-depth research on the origins and effects of language on the formation of consciousness and cognition. An example of such book is Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza's "Genes,... more info
Excellent:
Take One: Steven Pinker is the premier purveyor of the parsed poesy of plain prose. No, that won't do. No matter how accurate that statement is, its excessive alliteration is bound to sound too cutesy for such an engaging read as his latest foray into the way mankind thinks and speaks. Take Two: In his previous bestselling books, such as The Blank Slate, How The Mind Works, and The Language Instinct (to name just the most influential), Pinker- a Harvard cognitive psychologist, has emerged as the... more info
