The Stuff Of Thought Language As A Window Into Human Nature Pdf: How Words Reveal Our Minds

The Stuff of Thought: Language As a Window Into Human Nature is a 2007 book by experimental psychologist Steven Pinker. In the book Pinker "analyzes how our words relate to thoughts and to the world around us and reveals what this tells us about ourselves."[1] Put another way, Pinker "probes the mystery of human nature by examining how we use words".[2] The book became a New York Times best seller.

At the same time, this volume rounds out another trilogy: three books on human nature. How the Mind Works tried to reverse-engineer the psyche in the light of cognitive science and evolutionary psychology. The Blank Slate explored the concept of human nature and its moral, emotional, and political colorings. This one broaches the topic in still another way: what we can learn about our makeup from the way people put their thoughts and feelings in words.

The Stuff Of Thought Language As A Window Into Human Nature Pdf

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As in my other books on language, the early chapters occasionally dip into technical topics. But I have worked hard to make them transparent, and I am confident that my subject will engage anyone with an interest in what makes us tick. Language is entwined with human life. We use it to inform and persuade, but also to threaten, to seduce, and of course to swear. It reflects the way we grasp reality, and also the image of ourselves we try to project to others, and the bonds that tie us to them. It is, I hope to convince you, a window into human nature.

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.

All of which makes good, practical sense from an evolutionary point of view. Adaptations are cumulative, of course, and nature builds ever so slowly and imperfectly, if at all, upon existing structures. While theoretically possible, we should never assume a priori that an isolated region of the brain would take sole responsibility for any behavior or the accomplishment of any task. Recent investigations make it clear that the human brain has evolved into a highly integrated (not to mention surprisingly plastic) organ.

In 1994, Steve published the first of five books written for general audiences. The Language Instinct was an introduction to all aspects of language, held together by the idea that language is a biological adaptation. This was followed in 1997 by How the Mind Works, which offered a similar synthesis of the rest of the mind, from vision and reasoning to the emotions, humor, and art. He was drawn to the field of cognitive science and served as director of the MIT Center for Cognitive Neuroscience from 1994-99. In 1999 he published Words and Rules: The Ingredients of Language which presented his research on regular and irregular verbs as a way of explaining how language works in general. In 2002 he published The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature, which explored the political, moral, and emotional colorings of the concept of human nature. The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature, published in 2007, discussed the ways in which language reveals our thoughts, emotions, and social relationships. In 2011, he published The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, Pinker frequently writes for The New York Times, Time, The New Republic, and other magazines on subjects such as language and politics, the neural basis of consciousness, and the genetic enhancement of human beings. Steve is the Chair of the Usage Panel of The American Heritage Dictionary and has served as editor, advisor or Board member of numerous journals for psychology and linguistics and for scientific, scholarly, media, and humanist organizations, including the American Association the Advancement of Science, the National Science Foundation, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Psychological Association, and the Linguistics Society of America. 2ff7e9595c