Παρασκευή 25 Μαρτίου 2011

Ο Στήβεν Πίνκερ για τη γλώσσα και τη σκέψη

About this talk

Σε μία αποκλειστική προ-παρουσίαση του βιβλίου του "Το Υλικό της Σκέψης", ο Στήβεν Πίνκερ αναφέρεται στη γλώσσα και στο πώς αυτή εκφράζει τι συμβαίνει μέσα στο μυαλό μας - καθώς και τον τρόπο με τον οποίο οι λέξεις που επιλέγουμε επικοινωνούν πολύ περισσότερα από αυτά που τελικά νομίζουμε.

About Steven Pinker

Linguist Steven Pinker questions the very nature of our thoughts -- the way we use words, how we learn, and how we relate to others. In his best-selling books, he has brought sophisticated language analysis to bear on topics of wide general interest.

Why you should listen to him:

Steven Pinker's books have been like bombs tossed into the eternal nature-versus-nurture debate. Pinker asserts that not only are human minds predisposed to certain kinds of learning, such as language, but that from birth our minds -- the patterns in which our brain cells fire -- predispose us each to think and behave differently.
His deep studies of language have led him to insights into the way that humans form thoughts and engage our world. He argues that humans have evolved to share a faculty for language, the same way a spider evolved to spin a web. We aren't born with “blank slates” to be shaped entirely by our parents and environment, he argues in books including The Language Instinct; How the Mind Works; and The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature.
In 2003, Harvard recruited Pinker for its psychology department from MIT. Time magazine named Pinker one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2004. His latest book is The Stuff of Thought, previewed at TEDGlobal 2005. He is working on a new book that studies violence.