WHAT KIND OF CREATURES ARE WE
Book ID/图书代码： 11650015B77124
English Summary/英文概要： Addressing the most fundamental themes defining our humanity: the uniquely human capacity for language, the nature and limits of the human mind, and the possibilities for the common good in human society and politics.
Noam Chomsky is widely known and deeply admired for being the founder of modern linguistics, one of the founders of the field of cognitive science, and perhaps the most avidly read political theorist and commentator of our time. In these lectures,he presents a lifetime of philosophical reflection on all three of these areas of research to which he has contributed for over half a century.
In clear, precise, and non-technical language, Chomsky elaborates on fifty years of scientific development in the study of language, sketching how his own work has implications for the origins of language, the close relations that language bears to thought, and its eventual biological basis. He expounds and criticizes many alternative theories, such as those that emphasize the social, the communicative, and the referential aspects of language. Chomsky reviews how newdiscoveries about language overcome what seemed to be highly problematicassumptions in the past. He also investigates the apparent scope and limits of human cognitive capacities and what the human mind can seriously investigate, in the light of history of science and philosophical reflection and current understanding. Moving from language and mind to society and politics, he concludes with a searching exploration and philosophical defense of a position he describes as “libertarian socialism,” tracing its links to anarchism and the ideas of John Dewey, and even briefly to the ideas of Marx and Mill, demonstrating its conceptual growth out of our historical past and urgent relation to matters of the present.
Chinese Summary/中文概要： 作为现代语言学和认知科学的奠基人之一，当代著名哲学家乔姆斯基在本书中从语言学的研究角度，探索人类究竟是怎样的造物。
全书由四个问题构成：语言是什么？我们能理解什么？人类的共同福祉是什么？大自然的奥秘究竟是怎样的？在解析这四个主题的过程中，作者旁征博引地融入了科学史上众多重要科学家的科学理论和近现代哲学家的思想，以及C.I.刘易斯、费耶阿本德、内格尔等人的科学哲学理论。通过阐述五十年来语言学研究的发展，乔姆斯基勾勒出他本人对语言起源、语言与思维的关系以及语言之生物学基础等问题的观点。(DB)
Awards/获奖情况：◎ 编辑推荐
乔姆斯基在本书中，结合科学史和哲学史，探讨了人类认知能力的限度。这位似乎无所不知的语言学家，关心着他所能关心的最大范围的人与自然。
PRAISE:
“A master class taint by a master, and if someone were to ask me what exactly is it that academics do, I would point to these lectures and say, simply, here it is, the thing itself.”--Stanley Fish, The New York Times
About the Author/作者介绍： 诺姆 • 乔姆斯基（Noam Chomsky，1928— ），著名语言学家、思想家，被誉为“现代语言学之父”。1928年出生于美国费城的犹太家庭，就学于宾夕法尼亚大学和哈佛大学，获得语言学博士学位后，长期任教于麻省理工学院。乔姆斯基的学术研究以语言学为起点，之后延伸到多个领域，如哲学、认知科学、计算机科学、心理学、社会学等。乔姆斯基的著作有一百五十余种，受到广泛阅读，是20世纪中后期以来被引用次数最多的人文学者之一。代表性著作有《句法结构》（Syntactic Structures）、《语言学理论的逻辑结构》（The Logical Structure of Language Theory)、《论自然与语言》（On Nature and Language），以及《世界如何运转》《恐怖主义文化》《宣传与公共意识》《新自由主义与全球秩序》等不同领域的著述。
Noam Chomsky is professor emeritus of linguistics and philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and has written and lectured widely on linguistics, philosophy, intellectual history, contemporary issues, international affairs, and U.S. foreign policy. He is the author of more than one hundred books.
Format:HARDCOVER
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