cognitive science

Maryanne Wolf puts Proust into her book because she likes his account of reading’s pleasures. The squid part of her book is more interesting. Scientists in the 1950s used the squid’s nervous system to discover how neurons transmit to each other, and this leads Wolf to an account of how today’s cognitive neuroscientists are finding out what happens inside a human brain when it learns to read.

A great piece of writing on two creative minds, pushing the frontier of artificial intelligence, and their deaths which happened far too soon. AI is at the core of cognitive science, and while I don't share the traditional AI view of what cognition is, it is forever a part of a scientific field that doesn't cease to surprise, amaze and move me. This article conveys much of that.

Stephen Pinker, in Language as a Window Into Human Nature, says humans are verbivores—that is, we live on words—and linguistics reveals hidden operations of the mind. “...words determine our reality, or at least a large part of it. Semantics is no arcane intellectual quibble; it lies at the core of our existence”, says Pinker. Thought-provoking stuff.