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Sep 17, 2007

"Language exerts hidden power, like a moon on the tides." --Rita Mae Brown

Language: A Window to Human Nature

In "The Stuff of Thought," celebrated Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker sets out to explain how language reveals our inner nature. Terming us "verbivores, a species that lives on words," Pinker argues that our verbivorous, highly biased perception of reality differs radically from the findings of science yet allows us to thrive in a complex universe. The meanings of words matter profoundly, for words determine our reality, or at least a large part of it. Pinker exploits his wonderfully keen faculty for linguistic observation to pry open the human head and discover its secrets. In this link, cognitive scientist Douglas Hofstadter reviews "The Stuff of Thought."