Order from a Major Online Bookstore
Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine
Save Your Time And Money
| AnyBook4Less.com | Order from a Major Online Bookstore |
|
| Home | Store List | FAQ | Contact Us | | ||
| Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine Save Your Time And Money |
||
 |
Title: The Symbolic Species: The Co-Evolution of Language and the Brain by Terrence W. Deacon ISBN: 0-393-31754-4 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: April, 1998 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.15 (34 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: The Symbolic Species is truly remarkable!
Comment: I had the pleasure of taking language evolution with Prof. Deacon this past Fall semester. In the course, we examined many critical aspects of the language origins controversy. Begining with Gall's area 33 and finishing with Pinker's: The Language Instinct. In the Symbolic Species, Deacon's approach is systematic, logical, and learned. In this book, he combines paleoarcheological, primatological, and neuroscientific facts composing an argument which counters those of Pinker and Chompsky. The highlight of the book, comes in part two and three where neuroscientific and primatological evidence are used to explain the origins of language resting not on some illusive module or LAD but rather on our unique ability to abstract and think SYMBOLICALLY. This is the hallmack of human thinking. Prefrontal development and expansion in combination with environmental pressures for better tool making and social organization, Deacon explains, might be what is responsible for our symbolic abilities which other animals have such difficulty with. All in all this is truly a remarkable book which every student of psychology, anthropology, zoology, and linguistics needs to read!
Rating: 5
Summary: architectural structure of arguments
Comment: Reading only one or two pages into this book already makes it clear that this is a work by an exceptionally well informed and disciplined writer; and reading to the end does not disappoint at any time. This is a tightly argued serious scientific thesis by a professor of biological anthropology with an encyclopedic knowledge of linguistics, neurophysiology, neuroanatomy and human evolution. It is an original work in which Deacon sets out his arguments and marshals the evidence for a comprehensive theory in a methodical and structured way. It is not for the faint hearted, and reading it demands careful attention to the tightly written dense structured prose; it is not repetitive and the logical structure of the arguments is architectural, so that careful reading and a good memory are essential. Useful diagrammatic illustrations help to make some of the concepts easier to grasp. The effort is worth every moment. Deacon's conclusions have consequences for philosophy and theory of mind no less than for the central area of linguistics and the evolution of human intelligence. This book has done more to shape and to consolidate my knowledge of who we as a "symbolic species" are than any other I have read in this decade. Strongly recommended.
Rating: 4
Summary: How special are symbols?
Comment: The following is based mostly on others' discussions of _The Symbolic Species_, so I may have missed arguments/explanations from the book itself.
The author argues that symbolic references are what separates human language from that of other animals. In the third chapter, he defines a symbolic relationship as one that is neither iconic (based on formal similarity) nor indexical (based on contiguity in space/time). Instead, a symbolic relationship is a connection between two or more indices: the relationship between "A" and "B" reminds one of the relationship between "B" and "C", rather than just "A", "B" and "C" refering to one another separately. A word, then, can be a symbol because its relationship to the external world can be affected by the word(s) with which it co-occurs in speech (in other words, there is a connection between connections). I may not be correctly understanding Deacon's use of "symbol"; it was not so easy for me to see what it meant. Deacon also says, I think, that symbolic connections damage, or can damage, the ability to implement lower-level connections: use of the word "fire" can cause one to think of related words/concepts, rather than respond to the immediate presence of a fire.
If I have understood Deacon's definition of "symbol", then, in neurological terms, symbolic relationships should correspond, to some extent, to a hierarchy of connections between neurons, reflecting, maybe among other things, the connections between lower-order indexical relationships. Deacon says in ch. 9 that the well-connected prefrontal cortex is involved in constructing "the distributed mnemonic [reviewer defines "mnemonic" as "memory-related"] architecture that supports symbolic reference", but that it does not have much to do with "the storage or retrieval of symbols" (both ch.9). If I understand him here, he is saying that, once prefrontal connections have been used in the creation of symbolic relationships, they are left free to create new ones rather than devoted to any specific ones.
I do not know that i agree with Deacon, overall, though i thought he may haved done well to focus on learning -- e.g. the chimpanzee experiment in ch.4 -- rather than less empirical concepts of cognition. Still, _The Symbolic Species_ is best read with an eye out for subjective statements (in ch.13, I think he claims that only humans can experience conflicting emotions) and with the understanding that he may not always adequately define the "symbols" he discusses.
 |
Title: The Language Instinct : How the Mind Creates Language by Steven Pinker ISBN: 0060958332 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 07 November, 2000 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
 |
Title: Evolving Brains by John Allman ISBN: 071676038X Publisher: W H Freeman & Co. Pub. Date: 27 March, 2000 List Price(USD): $22.95 |
 |
Title: The Prehistory of the Mind: The Cognitive Origins of Art, Religion and Science by Steven Mithen ISBN: 0500281009 Publisher: Thames & Hudson Pub. Date: 01 April, 1999 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
 |
Title: The Evolutionary Emergence of Language : Social Function and the Origins of Linguistic Form by Chris Knight, Michael Studdert-Kennedy, James Hurford ISBN: 0521786967 Publisher: Cambridge University Press Pub. Date: 20 November, 2000 List Price(USD): $29.00 |
 |
Title: Origins of the Modern Mind: Three Stages in the Evolution of Culture and Cognition by Merlin Donald ISBN: 0674644840 Publisher: Harvard Univ Pr Pub. Date: February, 1993 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
Thank you for visiting www.AnyBook4Less.com and enjoy your savings!
Copyright� 2001-2021 Send your comments
