Douglas Hofstadter reviews Pinker's latest book, The Stuff of Thought. Pinker would like language to be as precise a guide to the mind's machinery as the behavior of particles in force fields is a guide to the laws of physics. He sees linguistic regularities abounding, and he tries using them to penetrate the hidden "language of thought," whose most critical ingredients are "ethereal notions of space, time, causation, possession, and goals." Although I'm less sanguine than Pinker about language's regularity -- and, indeed, about the existence of a "language of thought" -- I find his thesis well worth contemplating. I find it odd that the author of "How the Mind Works" never cites the authors of "The Way We Think."
For those of you in the DC area: On Monday, 17 September, at 7 P.M. Harvard psychology professor Steven Pinker presents a lecture, "How Everyday Words Reveal Who We Are," drawn from his new book, as part of the Smithsonian Associates Program being held at the National Academy of Sciences, 2101 Constitution Ave. NW. Admission is $25 for nonmembers; call 202-633-3030 or visit http://www.smithsonianassociates.org to RSVP.
Hofstadter reads Pinker |
