The Recursive Mind: The Origins of Human Language, Thought, and Civilization, is a fascinating and well-grounded exposition of the nature and power of recursion. In its ultra-reasonable way, this is quite a revolutionary book because it attacks key notions about language and thought. Most notably, it disputes the idea, argued especially by linguist Noam Chomsky, that thought is fundamentally linguistic
in ... Read moreother words, you need language before you can have thoughts.
Liz Else, New Scientist Michael Corballis has written a delightful book that makes an important contribution to our understanding of the emergence of our unique capacity to communicate using a verbal generative language... Although I do not agree entirely with all of Corballis' positions, I do subscribe to most of them. More importantly I admire the way in which he formulates issues worth thinking about, which alone makes his contribution very valuable. I am happy to recommend this book to both lay readers and experts in the field.
Robert K. Logan, Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development Engaging.
Australian The book nicely represents current trends in evolution-based cognitive science and presupposes very little by way of background.
Mark Aronoff, Quarterly Review of Biology Show Less