Ian Glynn, An anatomy of thought: The origin and machinery of the mind. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Pp. vi, 456. Hb $35.

2002 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 613-616
Author(s):  
Ronald Gray
Keyword(s):  
Artificial Intelligence ◽  
New York ◽  
Interdisciplinary Approach ◽  
Oxford University ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Oxford University Press

In this highly ambitious book, Glynn attempts to provide a description of both how the brain works and how it has developed. Taking an interdisciplinary approach (he is a physiologist by training), he relies on insights from a wide number of disciplines, including psychology, neurology, anthropology, linguistics, artificial intelligence, psychiatry, physiology, and even philosophy. He is interested in providing answers to some perennial and interconnected questions that relate to the mind: “What kind of thing is mind? What is the relation between our minds and our bodies and, more specifically, what is the relation between what goes on in our minds, and what goes on in our brains? How did brains and minds originate? Can our brains be regarded as nothing more than exceedingly complicated machines? Can minds exist without brains” (p. 4). Although his arguments are rather technical, the book is intended for a nonscientist audience.

Ray Jackendoff, Foundations of language: Brain, meaning, grammar, evolution. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. 2002. Pp. xix, 477. Hb $40.00.

2003 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 415-418
Author(s):  
Robbins Burling
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Linguistic Anthropology ◽  
Close Attention ◽  
Oxford University ◽  
Left Behind ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Oxford University Press

In this extraordinary book, Jackendoff proposes nothing less than a new way to understand the architecture of language and a new way to view the relation of language to the brain, to the mind, to behavior, and to the evolution of our species. It is, among many other things, an invitation for cooperation from one of the world's leading formal syntacticians to linguists of diverse orientations and to those from adjacent fields, including sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology. If we don't want to be left behind, we had better pay close attention.

Beérkezett könyvek

2008 ◽  
Vol 63 (4) ◽  
pp. 769-770
Author(s):  
Csaba Pléh
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
New Science ◽  
Oxford University ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Oxford University Press

Danziger, Kurt: Marking the mind. A history of memory . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2008Farkas, Katalin: The subject’s point of view. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2008MosoninéFriedJudités TolnaiMárton(szerk.): Tudomány és politika. Typotex, Budapest, 2008Iacobini, Marco: Mirroring people. The new science of how we connect with others. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 2008Changeux, Jean-Pierre. Du vrai, du beau, du bien.Une nouvelle approche neuronale. Odile Jacob, PárizsGazzaniga_n

Linguists play catchup with evolution

2001 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 581-591 ◽  
Author(s):  
DEREK BICKERTON
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Computational Linguistics ◽  
Language Evolution ◽  
Evolution Of Language ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
Oxford University ◽  
Language And Communication ◽  
Georgetown University ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Oxford University Press

Donald Loritz, How the brain evolved language. New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Pp. 227.Lyle Jenkins, Biolinguistics : exploring the biology of language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Pp. xiii+264.In the course of reviewing recent books on the evolution of language and communication (Dunbar 1996, Hauser 1996, Deacon 1997) I have had occasion to note that relatively few writers on these topics know much about linguistics, and to wish that more of them did. I should have remembered the old adage that one shouldn't wish for things - one might get them.For more than a century, linguists honored the Linguistic Society of Paris's ban on all discussion of language evolution; other disciplines went ahead with it regardless. Now that the centrality of language evolution to any study of our species is becoming apparent, linguists are desperately trying to play catchup, and the two volumes reviewed here both appeared in the last couple of years. Both authors are linguists, albeit hyphenated ones. Donald Loritz teaches computational linguistics at Georgetown University; his doctorate was in psycholinguistics. Lyle Jenkins works in the Biolinguistics Institute in Cambridge, MA; however, his doctorate was in unhyphenated linguistics. It would be difficult to find two authors whose ideas were more diametrically opposed.

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