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Title: Lingua ex Machina: Reconciling Darwin and Chomsky with the Human Brain by William H. Calvin, Derek Bickerton ISBN: 0-262-03273-2 Publisher: Bradford Book Pub. Date: 04 February, 2000 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $40.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 2 (3 reviews)
Rating: 1
Summary: Reconcile yourselves first
Comment: The way this book has been written makes it hard to follow. Instead of the two authors writing a unified piece of work that is cogent and coherent, readers are made to undergo fragmented prose written in a style more befitting of that used in a Livejournal or blog.
The contents of the book take an epistolary form. Calvin will write his opinions in the form of a letter to Bickerton, who will respond to Calvin's views, sometimes contradicting him. The words of each author are marked by the book by the use of two different font styles. As a result, within the same chapter, you'll be constantly distracted by the switching font styles, sometimes for a few lines, sometimes for a few pages. I found this very distracting.
It is also disconcerting to note that the authors often fail to get their act together. What each author has done is to merely present his views and the other will respond. I found it hard to see any form of convincing argumentation that the book is trying to convey on the whole.
There is no clear statement of what the book wishes to address at the outset, and readers are simply led by the nose into what seems more like a personal conversation between the two authors.
I wouldn't recommend this book to someone without adequate background knowledge of theories of language evolution (phylogenetic sense), cognitive psychology, and to a lesser extent, evolutionary biology.
Rating: 1
Summary: The usual lie
Comment: Calvin bases his ideas on this 'observation' in chapter 7:
"The axon acts like an express train, skipping many intermediate stops, giving off synapses only when about 0.5, 1.0, and 1.5 mm away from the tall dendrite (and sometimes continuing for a few millimeters farther, maintaining the integer multiples of the basic metric, 0.5 mm). "
This is a plain lie.
Rating: 4
Summary: Conversation on conversation
Comment: The so-called "reconcilation" promised by the title is not entirely delivered. Both Calvin and Bickerton seem too taken with their respective ideas. It is an interesting discussion nonetheless, and good points are made by both writers.
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Title: Language & Species by Derek Bickerton ISBN: 0226046117 Publisher: University of Chicago Press Pub. Date: 01 March, 1992 List Price(USD): $24.00 |
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Title: How Brains Think: Evolving Intelligence, Then and Now by William H. Calvin ISBN: 046507278X Publisher: Basic Books Pub. Date: 01 September, 1997 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: The Cerebral Code: Thinking a Thought in the Mosaics of the Mind by William H. Calvin ISBN: 0262531542 Publisher: Bradford Book Pub. Date: 06 February, 1998 List Price(USD): $21.95 |
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Title: Language and Human Behavior by Derek Bickerton ISBN: 0295974583 Publisher: University of Washington Press Pub. Date: 01 July, 1996 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Wider than the Sky: The Phenomenal Gift of Consciousness by Gerald M. Edelman ISBN: 0300102291 Publisher: Yale University Press Pub. Date: 10 March, 2004 List Price(USD): $24.00 |
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