The Stuff of Thought - Book Review

Though the book is sub-titled "Language as a window into human nature," this book really should be titled "the English language as a window into anglophonic nature." Given that this book studies the English language only, the author should not advertise that his conclusions generalise to other languages (though he does acknowledge this limitation in a way within the text). Indeed, though language affects thought and thought affects human nature, the kind of human nature proposed to be understood through this book is only very specific to the minds of English-language speakers (see also my upcoming piece on the relation between language and philosophy). However, this book does a good job at that specific task.

Back to Book Reviews