Dedre Gentner and Susan Goldin-Meadow (eds): Language in Mind: Advances in the Study of Language and Thought. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2003, ISBN 0-262-57163-3, x + 528 pp

摘要

Despite 'scientific' developments and experimental research in the fields of linguistic and cognitive sciences, the relationship between language, thought and cognition is far from settled. On the contrary, these inquiries seem to make the issue ever more elusive. Empirical investigations are not in themselves decisive, since they are founded on assumptions and specific modes of posing questions, which go deep into diverse philosophical musings. This is not to deny the role of preconceptions in any serious scientific work, but the results can sometimes be just as conclusive as the reckonings of Tweedledum-Tweedledee in "If it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be: but as it isn't, it ain't" (Lewis Carrol's Through the Looking Glass). This 'uncertainty' in experimental physics, way back in 1897, would have almost denied us the discovery of electrons, had not J. J. Thomson's sensibilities superseded the positivistic outlook of his contemporary Walter Kaufmann (Weinberg, 1992). But then, "If science is the constellation of facts, theories, and methods ..., then scientists are the [wo]men who, successfully or not, have striven to contribute one or another element to that particular constellation. Scientific development becomes the piecemeal process by which these items have been added, singly and in combination, to the ever growing stockpile that constitutes scientific technique and knowledge" (Kuhn, 1996, pp. 1-2). The success of the present collection of articles by cognitive scientists and linguists lies in the reconfirmation of these facts. Reposing one of the original questions of the discipline—the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis that contemplates the possible influence of language on thought—the book makes latest approaches and research in cognitive linguistics undergo test by fire.