The Skull of Australopithecus afarensis. Human Evolution Series. By William H  Kimbel, Yoel  Rak, and , Donald C  Johanson; with a contribution on the brain endocast by , Ralph L  Holloway and , Michael S  Yuan. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. $150.00. x + 254 p; ill.; index. ISBN: 0–19–515706–0. 2004.

2004 ◽  
Vol 79 (4) ◽  
pp. 413-413
Author(s):  
Tim D White
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Human Evolution ◽  
Australopithecus Afarensis ◽  
Oxford University ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Oxford University Press

Linguists play catchup with evolution

2001 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 581-591 ◽  
Author(s):  
DEREK BICKERTON
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Computational Linguistics ◽  
Language Evolution ◽  
Evolution Of Language ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
Oxford University ◽  
Language And Communication ◽  
Georgetown University ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Oxford University Press

Donald Loritz, How the brain evolved language. New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Pp. 227.Lyle Jenkins, Biolinguistics : exploring the biology of language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Pp. xiii+264.In the course of reviewing recent books on the evolution of language and communication (Dunbar 1996, Hauser 1996, Deacon 1997) I have had occasion to note that relatively few writers on these topics know much about linguistics, and to wish that more of them did. I should have remembered the old adage that one shouldn't wish for things - one might get them.For more than a century, linguists honored the Linguistic Society of Paris's ban on all discussion of language evolution; other disciplines went ahead with it regardless. Now that the centrality of language evolution to any study of our species is becoming apparent, linguists are desperately trying to play catchup, and the two volumes reviewed here both appeared in the last couple of years. Both authors are linguists, albeit hyphenated ones. Donald Loritz teaches computational linguistics at Georgetown University; his doctorate was in psycholinguistics. Lyle Jenkins works in the Biolinguistics Institute in Cambridge, MA; however, his doctorate was in unhyphenated linguistics. It would be difficult to find two authors whose ideas were more diametrically opposed.

Ian Glynn, An anatomy of thought: The origin and machinery of the mind. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Pp. vi, 456. Hb $35.

2002 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 613-616
Author(s):  
Ronald Gray
Keyword(s):  
Artificial Intelligence ◽  
New York ◽  
Interdisciplinary Approach ◽  
Oxford University ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Oxford University Press

In this highly ambitious book, Glynn attempts to provide a description of both how the brain works and how it has developed. Taking an interdisciplinary approach (he is a physiologist by training), he relies on insights from a wide number of disciplines, including psychology, neurology, anthropology, linguistics, artificial intelligence, psychiatry, physiology, and even philosophy. He is interested in providing answers to some perennial and interconnected questions that relate to the mind: “What kind of thing is mind? What is the relation between our minds and our bodies and, more specifically, what is the relation between what goes on in our minds, and what goes on in our brains? How did brains and minds originate? Can our brains be regarded as nothing more than exceedingly complicated machines? Can minds exist without brains” (p. 4). Although his arguments are rather technical, the book is intended for a nonscientist audience.

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