Ratings7
Average rating3.3
New York Times 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 and popular science writers.Now, in The Stuff of Thought, Pinker marries two of the subjects he knows best: language and human nature. The result is a fascinating look at how our words explain our nature. What does swearing reveal about our emotions? Why does innuendo disclose something about relationships? Pinker reveals how our use of prepositions and tenses taps into peculiarly human concepts of space and time, and how our nouns and verbs speak to our notions of matter. Even the names we give our babies have important things to say about our relations to our children and to society.With his signature wit and style, Pinker takes on scientific questions like whether language affects thought, as well as forays into everyday life—why is bulk e-mail called spam and how do romantic comedies get such mileage out of the ambiguities of dating? The Stuff of Thought is a brilliantly crafted and highly readable work that will appeal to fans of readers of everything from The Selfish Gene and Blink to Eats, Shoots & Leaves.
Reviews with the most likes.
With a background in linguistics, I find this sort of thing very interesting. I like the stories and examples of language that he used, although I think it was a little to English-centric.
I like neuroscience, linguistics, and Steven Pinker, but I have apparently reached my limit. This is the dullest book I have ever read on my own time. I think the exact moment my brain melted forever was when Pinker spent several paragraphs explaining that actually, chicken can mean an animal or a food, because depending on the context, you could be talking about the bird known as a chicken OR a food in which you eat that is comprised of that bird and -
SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP
Anyways I DNF'd