The Stuff of Thought
Book description
The Pulitzer Prize finalist author of The Blank Slate presents an accessible study of the relationship between language and human nature, explaining how everything from swearing and innuendo to prepositions and baby names reveal facts about key human concepts, emotions, and relationships.
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Why read it?
1 author picked The Stuff of Thought as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
In this witty and provocative book, psycholinguistics researcher Steven Pinker explores the role of language in shaping our experience of reality.
Human-style thinking would not be possible without our capacity for language. Thoughts are basically internal language. Among the basic experiences shaped by linguistics is our experience of time.
We use language to construct a spatial metaphor for time, thinking in terms of “moving” “forward” or “backward” in time. Pinker takes us for a walk around the metaphorical space of consciousness, examining how language shapes our experience of the world.
From Chad's list on thoughts, and our relationship with them.
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