Rent: The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature

Even though I am a scientist with deep interests in language and reason, I found this book too frequently getting bogged down in minutia to keep my interest. The introductory sections were very interesting and promised much would be revealed in the text - but to garner that revelation took too much effort for me, and I gave up after about 100 pages. It reads more like a PhD dissertation than a popular book for the enlightened masses.

Pinker iis brilliant and is trying to bring psychology into the realm of hard science. Better to read his HOW THE MIND WORKS.

Well. This is tougher review than I assumed it would be while I anxiously awaited its arrival.

The first three chapters are an entertaining overview of the English language with special mention of the strange quirks and "hidden -- or are they?" intricacies. He starts out with a lawsuit based on words(what else?) to determine the amount of money an insurance company should pay for damages which occurred on 9/11. (Do they pay "double" because each tower was a separate incident ... or do they pay the planned single amount because 9/11 was "9/11" and it was a single event?) Mostly, he goes through the tiny differences in the words we choose and I was certainly left with an Aha! understanding about WHY I choose words differently and the often subtle undercurrents in that choice. (By the way, English doesn't have a monopoly on the "system" he outlines -- variance twixt the grammars of the world are remarkably consistent.) Though typically entertaining, these first chapters are also redundant to the point of sluggishness.

Then the books sparkles with his usual panache for the next three chapters. I found it surprising to learn how many words (and how finite THAT number is!) are spatial prepositions, and, by the way ... why do "slow down" and "slow up" mean the same thing? Each element of language is treated with style, fun and eye-opening examples, plus lots and lots to think about.

Chapter Seven follows. I couldn't finish it. For reasons which totally escape me, he is totally enamoured with "THE SEVEN" -- (inappropriate words for TV -- or in the presence oxygen, in my opinion). I think he contends that a part of the brain just can't wait to unleash them on the world. I do not believe that that is true. I was 18 before I encountered the F--- word and that was in a book printed exactly as I have printed it here. Didn't have a clue! I don't much appreciate his adding to my repertoire in the name of science; I finally gave up on the balance of the chapter.

The remainder is his delightful insights into the "innateness" of language in all cultures, the sneaky applications that people can devise, the continuing "evolution".

As usual he is totally professional in delivery style: his page Notes are numbered within the text, his Reference List is extensive and his Index is complete and easy to use.

It's a good book but not his finest hour. (The Blank Slate -- verrry scary -- wins that award, I think.)

In his recent book, "The Stuff of Thought", author Steven Pinker makes a compelling case for hypocrisy being a vital habit in human conversation. His chapter "Games People Play" argues that hypocrisy furnishes us with a means to ease our ways through conversations in which we face potentially awkward or risk-filled circumstances. He therefore argues that hypocrisy is a necessary value in the evolution of the human species. As a professor of Linguistics and Psychology at Harvard, and the author of six previous books linking these disciplines, Steve Pinker ought to know.

But can we be entirely sure that the popular and prolific professor
actually does know what is quintessentially true about hypocrisy? I
confess that, in my heart, I want him to be quite in error on this subject, but not because I have been guiltless in never having indulged in hypocrisy. I want to find him in error on this question because, now in my sixties and a coach in the development of productive authenticity, I feel exceedingly uncomfortable either witnessing or indulging in hypocrisy, and indeed believe it is a monumentally slippery slope to disaster and perdition in human evolution.

But, given Pinker's academic authority, is my wanting him to be in error just wooly Pollyanna-like fantasy? The issue is critical for each of us to face and decide because hypocrisy is hard to distinguish from deliberate deception. This being so, our condoning deliberate deception in the generous assumption that it is merely "hypocrisy of a commendably easing kind", exposes all of us as a society to the risk that we may be casually enabling mild deception to become a habit that will grow into dangerously deliberate deception.

This issue does not overhang the entire book, however. No, the author has given what could be heavy and complex material frequent injections of delightful humour and penetrating wit. Linguists will, of course, love his breathtaking summations of recent linguistic and psychological research into what language and languages can tell us of the essential nature of the human mind. But, if you want to play your part in the pulling of human nature up from its primitive roots to a better potential future for planetary citizenship in which English will continue to be a potently vital force, or even if you only want to survive in a world of sharp users of English, you too will enjoy it.

It was my intention to mark the book for at least three stars, because of its many entertaining jokes, cartoons, quotations and linguistic quirks, whatever my estimation of the rest of the content. But on reaching chapter 7 on obscenities, I couldn't make myself mark a third star. Perhaps I haven't read much of recent concerned literature in finding the chapter surprising, but I definitely reject the author's thinking there is nothing wrong with his flagrant use of "taboo" language.

The author reasons (p.19): "...the phenomenon [meaning the disapproval] of taboo language is an affront to common sense. Excretion is an activity that every incarnate being must engage in daily, yet all the English words for it are indecent, juvenile, or clinical". The taboo words are of course the indecent ones. And (p.20): "No curious person can fail to be puzzled by the illogic and hypocrisy of linguistic taboos. Why should certain words, but not their homonyms or synonyms, be credited with a dreadful moral power?"

Ironically he observes elsewhere that taboo words carry certain offensive connotations, and even admits they should be avoided on occasions. But his defense in principle of them lacks the logic he talks about. Excretion, for instance, has, in contrast to nutrition, unpleasant odors, etc., and the taboo language for it connotes its objectionable aspects. The same holds for taboo words in general, and thus there is good reason for avoiding them.

However, I do not wish to dwell on this topic, but concentrate on the author's logic in more critical areas. It also enters politics, where his reasoning is evidently biased and where I don't wish to tread, not desiring associated polemics. My attention rather is more on his logic per se, alongside his use of it for fundamental causal laws.

He faults Hume's famed description of causation, quoting (p.211) Hume's passage (I corrected some punctuation in keeping with the original): "we may define a cause to be an object, followed by another, and where all the objects similar to the first are followed by objects similar to the second. Or in other words where, if the first object had not been, the second never had existed" (An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (The Clarendon Edition of the Works of David Hume)). Hume committed in his second sentence the fallacy of "denying the antecedent"; from "A implies B" does not follow "not-A implies not-B".

The reviewed author, however, seizes on that sentence as "an improvement over the constant-conjunction theory". He along with other referenced authors elaborates it into a "counterfactual theory of causation", invoking a fantastic infinity of "possible worlds". The reason for this elaboration is that the authors mistakenly interpret "not-A implies not-B" as contradicting the "fact" of A. But these don't concern facts, but rules. "Not-A implies not-B" doesn't follow from "A implies B", but not-A can be as much part of this world as can A.

The real trouble is that inference. If A causes B, it doesn't follow that B cannot happen without A. The author keeps saying that only striking the match will make it burn. How wrong; it will burn if you hold it to any fire. "There is more than one way to skin a cat."

He, not quite satisfied, brings further with other authors force or power into the action (p.217), insisting that Hume's conjunction of events is inadequate. Hume, however, was fully aware of "force" or "power" or "energy", his very point having been that these cannot be observed outside the conjunction of events. The author persistently complains that many events follow each other but are not causally connected, as if Hume had been ignorant of this. Our experiences are very rich, and even animals become discriminatory in apprehending what event brings about another.

To give one more illustration of the author's faulty logic, he mentions (p.214) the transitive law, "if A causes B, and B causes C, then A causes C". He then decides (p.223) that since "our concept of causation [is] based on intuitive physics, rather than a formula in formal logic, it needn't respect logical necessities such as transitivity. If...A launches...B, which is then stopped by...C, there is no reason to conceive of A as impinging on C at all". But B, meant in transitivity to be caused by A, is here not the likewise meant cause of C. If it were, A indeed would cause C. Logical laws, like mathematical ones, are universal.

Aside from the preceding, most of this tome of over 500 pages consists of pointless inventories of linguistic usage, lightened, as indicated, by comic relief. To me the numerous linguistic theories of various authors cited in the book are wasted, since linguistic forms, as is recognized, are arbitrary.

Allow me to mention that I discuss all these issues extensively in On Proof for Existence of God, and Other Reflective Inquiries.

I read it and enjoyed it. It is more densely written than Pinker's other recent books, or perhaps I'm denser; but the prose was not quite as lucid and captivating as the earlier stuff, especially How the Mind Works. Its overall theme is a bit hard to tease out.
There's a lot of good material, especially plain old grammar-- not so plain, actually, and I got some grammar lessons that I at last understood after all these years. This alone makes it worth it.
There was some especially good writing about examples of "false metaphors" that had my wife and I rolling in the aisle...

Previous reviewers have already commented that the book is well written, in a manner available to both the layman and professional, with little of the normal academic speak and bias. I concur. One thought occurs to me, which seemed alluded to by at least one of the other reviewers, that is seeing the materials presented here as a model for all of human behaviiour. Late in the book there is a discussion of four relationship types, their origins in human evolution and their exhibition by specific behaviours and language. It is interesting to compare the Market Pricing example to the other three, and ask if the ability / comfort of an individual with Market Pricing relationship-language, abstract models, mathematics, etc. might explain individual's preference for a specific political framework?

Read the book. Gets a bit long in the middle, but worthwhile for the layman.

Steven Pinker's most recent book is as intelligent and witty as those which came before. The information herein is accessible to professionals and lay people alike.

Pinker's book, `The Stuff of Thought', is a thorough survey of linguistics and word use that is often very funny and insightful. The countless examples of word origins and of the logic that goes into sayings and lingual mechanisms (like metaphors) are brilliant and really do lend insight to the way our minds work. The thorough survey of naming (possibly the most entertaining chapter) could well be the quintessential treatment of the subject.

A downside to this book that the prospective reader should consider is that there seems to be no real idea. The author makes many good points about language in general and phrases a question about why we say what we don't mean, but it doesn't really add up to anything. By the end of the book, after the author has shuffled through a brief examination of words' roles in society, the reader is left grasping for something more useful.

It is possible that I (typical American English-user) was not able to `pick up' the idea of the book. The author does get rather scientific in his treatise and it is likely that I missed some of the more pedantic lines of thought. But this would seem to be counterproductive in a book about language. In many instances, Pinker employs words that will not connect with the average reader for their very scientific (abstract and cold) style, which piles up heaps of what looks like an argument, but does not issue an idea.

The reader should be prepared to read a lot of `scientisms' including the following: The Wholism Effect, locative construction, Gestalt shift, Anti-causative, polysemy, ungrammaticality, combinatory, dysphemistic, metonym / hypernym, count noun, combinatorics, and, my favorite, "causation from correlation by experimental manipulation". To some degree, the author expects the reader to know what all these mean because he does not explain them very well.

Getting beyond the linguistic jargon, which is quite heavy in the first half, the reader is treated to mesmerizing explorations of metaphors and word origins in the second half of the book. This is most likely where the popularity of the book will come from. The reader will connect, most likely because Pinker is talking about things that we all know about: names, cliches, catch phrases, etc. The section on cursing will also titillate the modern reader and sheds some discerning light on the contemporary speaker's overuse of profanity (much like Tom Wolfe's excellent survey in I Am Charlotte Simmons: A Novel). Readers should note that to survey cursing, Pinker uses the vulgarities regularly and so this book is quite vulgar in itself.

It is ironic that at the same time Pinker is explaining the effects of profanity, the reasons why we use it, and the consequences of overusing it, he is guilty of perpetuating the phenomenon. This is a problem throughout the book. Looking at something scientifically doesn't exempt one from being a part of it, especially if both the subject and method used are the same things--words. Indeed, it would seem that Pinker is unable to take the fully scientific objective perspective on this topic because of that innate challenge.

Overall, Pinker does remain meticulously objective (especially compared with noted colleagues of his) and one can read the text without being bombarded with irrelevant and annoying logical errors. His subtle Bush-bashing and Clinton-praising are done in ways pertinent to the subject matter, and he tries not to fall prey to other modern requisites of academia (he acknowledges that even liberals reserve taboos [the N-word], for example).

Worth the time and money for its analysis of language, `The Stuff of Thought' also touches on and could probably expand into a really useful survey of human thought and the human condition as a whole. For that, it is recommended.

Arguably, the human race is at the cusp of a new Enlightenment, the point at which enough has been learned about how our brain functions to begin to understand how it unconsciously affects our behavior more than we have realized. The discoveries of the left-brain's interpreter function and of mirror neurons have been recognized as important milestones in this unfolding saga, and Steven Pinker's revealing of how the brain's innate language processing modules and methods affect our interpretation and understanding of reality will undoubtedly be recognized as another milestone, another piece of the puzzle.

I must be honest: Dr. Pinker's book, "The Stuff of Thought," is both large and fact filled, and is consequently not an "easy read" in spite of Dr. Pinker's excellent and witty writing. That said, it is a necessary book for all who endeavor to understand the underpinnings of human behavior, and Dr. Pinker makes it as painless as is possible for such serious material.

Adam Leonard (Author of "Man by Nature: The Hidden Programming Controlling Human Behavior.")