Why are we so innovative? Where do new ideas come from? Why are human beings so exceptionally good at innovation, leaving other species mentally in the dust? How can we hold onto new ideas once they are formed? This book explores the claim that the human spark, the source of innovation and the origin of ideas, was an advance that occurred in a particular kind of mental operation, which Turner calls blending. Blending is our ability to take two ideas or more and create a new idea from the "blend." And what is so fascinating is how human beings are able to engage in blending almost without effort and usually unconsciously. It appears to be second nature to us, how we live and breathe in the course of processing information and ideas. Human beings are profoundly different from all other species in this ability. While many species can do what we cannot-fly, run amazingly fast, see in the dark--only human beings can innovate. Beginning somewhere in the Paleolithic Age, everything changed in the course of human events. Before that, we were a bunch of large mammals. After that, we were poised to take over the world. Turner makes the controversial and provocative claim that what made human advances possible was the ability to engage in the virtuosity of blending, which is everywhere apparent in our cultural record-in our creations and innovations--it is the origin of our ideas. Turner's theory of blending is featured in Jonah Lehrer's bestselling book, Imagine, and this book will be the first to lay out this theory in detail for a lay audience and academics tackling the nature of the human brain and the fascinating puzzle of what it means to be human.

The Origin of Ideas: Blending, Creativity, and the Human Spark

Science & Math

Turner, Mark

Behavioral Sciences

Oxford University Press

We usually consider literary thinking to be peripheral and dispensable, an activity for specialists: poets, prophets, lunatics, and babysitters. Certainly we do not think it is the basis of the mind. We think of stories and parables from Aesop's Fables or The Thousand and One Nights, for example, as exotic tales set in strange lands, with spectacular images, talking animals, and fantastic plots--wonderful entertainments, often insightful, but well removed from logic and science, and entirely foreign to the world of everyday thought. But Mark Turner argues that this common wisdom is wrong. The literary mind--the mind of stories and parables--is not peripheral but basic to thought. Story is the central principle of our experience and knowledge. Parable--the projection of story to give meaning to new encounters--is the indispensable tool of everyday reason. Literary thought makes everyday thought possible. This book makes the revolutionary claim that the basic issue for cognitive science is the nature of literary thinking. In The Literary Mind, Turner ranges from the tools of modern linguistics, to the recent work of neuroscientists such as Antonio Damasio and Gerald Edelman, to literary masterpieces by Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, and Proust, as he explains how story and projection--and their powerful combination in parable--are fundamental to everyday thought. In simple and traditional English, he reveals how we use parable to understand space and time, to grasp what it means to be located in space and time, and to conceive of ourselves, other selves, other lives, and other viewpoints. He explains the role of parable in reasoning, in categorizing, and in solving problems. He develops a powerful model of conceptual construction and, in a far-reaching final chapter, extends it to a new conception of the origin of language that contradicts proposals by such thinkers as Noam Chomsky and Steven Pinker. Turner argues that story, projection, and parable precede grammar, that language follows from these mental capacities as a consequence. Language, he concludes, is the child of the literary mind. Offering major revisions to our understanding of thought, conceptual activity, and the origin and nature of language, The Literary Mind presents a unified theory of central problems in cognitive science, linguistics, neuroscience, psychology, and philosophy. It gives new and unexpected answers to classic questions about knowledge, creativity, understanding, reason, and invention.

The Literary Mind: The Origins of Thought and Language

Literature & Fiction

History & Criticism

Figurative Language and Thought (Counterpoints: Cognition, Memory, and Language)

Our understanding of the nature and processing of figurative language is central to several important issues in cognitive science, including the relationship of language and thought, how we process language, and how we comprehend abstract meaning. Over the past fifteen years, traditional approaches to these issues have been challenged by experimental psychologists, linguists, and other cognitive scientists interested in the structures of the mind and the processes that operate on them. In Figurative Language and Thought, internationally recognized experts in the field of figurative language, Albert Katz, Mark Turner, Raymond W. Gibbs Jr., and Cristina Cacciari, provide a coherent and focused debate on the subject. The book's authors discuss a variety of fundamental questions, including: What can figures of speech tell us about the structure of the conceptual system? If and how should we distinguish the literal from the nonliteral in our theories of language and thought? Are we primarily figurative thinkers and consequently figurative language users or the other way around? Why do we prefer to speak metaphorically in everyday conversation, when literal options may be available for use? Is metaphor the only vehicle through which we can understand abstract concepts? What role do cultural and social factors play in our comprehension of figurative language? These and related questions are raised and argued in an integrative look at the role of nonliteral language in cognition. This volume, a part of Counterpoints series, will be thought-provoking reading for a wide range of cognitive psychologists, linguists, and philosophers.

Politics & Social Sciences

Katz, Albert N.

Cacciari, Cristina

Gibbs Jr., Raymond W.

Philosophy

Oxford University Press, USA

What will be the future of social science? Where exactly do we stand, and where do we go from here? What kinds of problems should we be addressing, with what kinds of approaches and arguments? In Cognitive Dimensions of Social Science, Mark Turner offers an answer to these pressing questions: social science is headed toward convergence with cognitive science. Together they will give us a new and better approach to the study of what human beings are, what human beings do, what kind of mind they have, and how that mind developed over the history of the species. Turner, one of the originators of the cognitive scientific theory of conceptual integration, here explores how the application of that theory enriches the social scientific study of meaning, culture, identity, reason, choice, judgment, decision, innovation, and invention. About fifty thousand years ago, humans made a spectacular advance: they became cognitively modern. This development made possible the invention of the vast range of knowledge, practices, and institutions that social scientists try to explain. For Turner, the anchor of all social science - anthropology, political science, sociology, economics - must be the study of the cognitively modern human mind. In this book, Turner moves the study of those extraordinary mental powers to the center of social scientific research and analysis.

Cognitive Dimensions of Social Science

Sociology

What will be the future of social science? Where exactly do we stand, and where do we go from here? What kinds of problems should we be addressing, with what kinds of approaches and arguments? In Cognitive Dimensions of Social Science, Mark Turner offers an answer to these pressing questions: social science is headed toward convergence with cognitive science. Together they will give us a new and better approach to the study of what human beings are, what human beings do, what kind of mind they have, and how that mind developed over the history of the species. Turner, one of the originators of the cognitive scientific theory of conceptual integration, here explores how the application of that theory enriches the social scientific study of meaning, culture, identity, reason, choice, judgment, decision, innovation, and invention.  About fifty thousand years ago, humans made a spectacular advance: they became cognitively modern. This development made possible the invention of the vast range of knowledge, practices, and institutions that social scientists try to explain. For Turner, the anchor of all social science - anthropology, political science, sociology, economics - must be the study of the cognitively modern human mind. In this book, Turner moves the study of those extraordinary mental powers to the center of social scientific research and analysis.

Cognitive Dimensions of Social Science: The Way We Think About Politics, Economics, Law, and Society (Psychology)

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Psychology & Counseling

This volume of the Complete Works of Oscar Wilde is the second volume of Wilde's journalism. Throughout the 1880s Oscar Wilde devoted the greater part of his creative energies to working as a professional journalist and he was prepared to write on a remarkable range of topics - from cookery books to lyric poetry, from classical translations to three-volume novels, from dress reform to transatlantic visitors. He also reviewed theatrical productions and art exhibitions of many kinds. Between 1887 and 1889 he edited the pioneering Woman's World magazine to which he contributed lengthy columns discussing literary and other matters of interest to an educated female readership. This is the first comprehensive edition of Wilde's journalism since 1908. It includes all of his known contributions, both signed and anonymous, to periodicals and newspapers. Of the more than 150 items - reviews, articles, editorials - a significant number have been identified for the first time, while the authenticity of others previously thought to be by Wilde is questioned. An extensive commentary offers the sources for Wilde's extraordinary cultural knowledge and provides cross-references to his oeuvre as whole. In the case of the book reviews, the commentary indicates relevant pages and passages in the works under discussion. Uniquely witty, intellectually acute, and socially aware Wilde's journalism not only displays the extensive reading and stylistic experimentation that prepared the way for his major works of the 1890s, it provides an essential record of the vibrant and rapidly changing journalistic culture in which he played a major part. This second volume of journalism presents all of Wilde's journalistic writings published between November 1887 and April 1895. It also contains a section of 'Dubia', which contains items where a degree of uncertainty regarding Wilde's authorship remains.

The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Volume VII: Journalism II

Stokes, John

Dramas & Plays

This volume of the Complete Works of Oscar Wilde is the first volume of Wilde's journalism. Throughout the 1880s Oscar Wilde devoted the greater part of his creative energies to working as a professional journalist and he was prepared to write on a remarkable range of topics - from cookery books to lyric poetry, from classical translations to three-volume novels, from dress reform to transatlantic visitors. He also reviewed theatrical productions and art exhibitions of many kinds. Between 1887 and 1889 he edited the pioneering Woman's World magazine to which he contributed lengthy columns discussing literary and other matters of interest to an educated female readership.This is the first comprehensive edition of Wilde's journalism since 1908. It includes all of his known contributions, both signed and anonymous, to periodicals and newspapers. Of the more than 150 items - reviews, articles, editorials - a significant number have been identified for the first time, while the authenticity of others previously thought to be by Wilde is questioned. An extensive commentary offers the sources for Wilde's extraordinary cultural knowledge and provides cross-references to his oeuvre as whole. In the case of the book reviews, the commentary indicates relevant pages and passages in the works under discussion. Uniquely witty, intellectually acute, and socially aware Wilde's journalism not only displays the extensive reading and stylistic experimentation that prepared the way for his major works of the 1890s, it provides an essential record of the vibrant and rapidly changing journalistic culture in which he played a major part.

The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde Volume VI: Journalism I (The ^AComplete Works of Oscar Wilde)

British & Irish

What makes human beings so innovative, so adept at rapid, creative thinking? Where do new ideas come from, and once we have them, how can we carry them mentally into new situations? What allows our thinking to range easily over time, space, causation, and agency-so easily that we take this truly remarkable ability for granted? In The Origin of Ideas, Mark Turner offers a provocative new theory to answer these and many other questions. While other species do what we cannot-fly, run amazingly fast, see in the dark-only human beings can innovate so rapidly and widely. Turner argues that this distinctively human spark was an evolutionary advance that developed from a particular kind of mental operation, which he calls "blending": our ability to take two or more ideas and create a new idea in the "blend." Turner begins by looking at the "lionman," a 32,000-year-old ivory figurine, one of the earliest examples of blending. Here, the concepts "lion" and "man" are merged into a new figure, the "lionman." Turner argues that at some stage during the Paleolithic Age, humans reached a tipping point. Before that, we were a bunch of large, unimaginative mammals. After that, we were poised to take over the world. Once biological evolution hit upon making brains that could do advanced blending, we possessed the capacity to invent and maintain culture. Cultural innovation could then progress by leaps and bounds over biological evolution itself, leading to the highest forms of human cognition and creativity. For anyone interested in how and why our minds work the way they do, The Origin of Ideas offers a wealth of original insights-and is itself a brilliant example of the innovative thinking it describes.

Mental Health

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Turner, Mark. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Turner, Mark

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Turner, Mark. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Origin of Ideas: Blending, Creativity, and the Human Spark

The Literary Mind: The Origins of Thought and Language

Figurative Language and Thought (Counterpoints: Cognition, Memory, and Language)

Figurative Language and Thought (Counterpoints: Cognition, Memory, and Language)

The Literary Mind: The Origins of Thought and Language

Cognitive Dimensions of Social Science

Cognitive Dimensions of Social Science: The Way We Think About Politics, Economics, Law, and Society (Psychology)

The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Volume VII: Journalism II

The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde Volume VI: Journalism I (The ^AComplete Works of Oscar Wilde)

The Origin of Ideas: Blending, Creativity, and the Human Spark