Recursive Mind

Michael C. Corballis is professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His books include "From Hand to Mouth: The Origins of Language" (Princeton) and "A Very Short Tour of the Mind: 21 Short Walks around the Human Brain".

• Preface vii Chapter 1 What Is Recursion? 1 PART 1: Language 17 Chapter 2: Language and Recursion 19 Chapter 3: Do Animals Have Language? 36 Chapter 4: How Language Evolved from Hand to Mouth 55 PART 2: Mental Time Travel 81 Chapter 5: Reliving the Past 83 Chapter 6: About Time 100 Chapter 7: The Grammar of Time 112 PART 3: Theory of Mind 129 Chapter 8: Mind Reading 131 Chapter 9: Language and Mind 151 PART 4: Human Evolution 167 Chapter 10: The Recurring Question 169 Chapter 11: Becoming Human 181 Chapter 12: Becoming Modern 208 Chapter 13: Final Thoughts 221 Notes 227 References 253 Index 281

"The Recursive Mind: The Origins of Human Language, Thought, and Civilization, is a fascinating and well-grounded exposition of the nature and power of recursion. In its ultra-reasonable way, this is quite a revolutionary book because it attacks key notions about language and thought. Most notably, it disputes the idea, argued especially by linguist Noam Chomsky, that thought is fundamentally linguistic--in other words, you need language before you can have thoughts."--Liz Else, New Scientist "Michael Corballis has written a delightful book that makes an important contribution to our understanding of the emergence of our unique capacity to communicate using a verbal generative language... Although I do not agree entirely with all of Corballis' positions, I do subscribe to most of them. More importantly I admire the way in which he formulates issues worth thinking about, which alone makes his contribution very valuable. I am happy to recommend this book to both lay readers and experts in the field."--Robert K. Logan, Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development "Engaging."--Australian "The book nicely represents current trends in evolution-based cognitive science and presupposes very little by way of background."--Mark Aronoff, Quarterly Review of Biology