Battle in the Mind Fields

Cloth $45.00 ISBN: 9780226550800 Published March 2019

E-book $10.00 to $45.00 About E-books ISBN: 9780226550947 Published March 2019

“We frequently see one idea appear in one discipline as if it were new, when it migrated from another discipline, like a mole that had dug under a fence and popped up on the other side.”

Taking note of this phenomenon, John Goldsmith and Bernard Laks embark on a uniquely interdisciplinary history of the genesis of linguistics, from nineteenth-century currents of thought in the mind sciences through to the origins of structuralism and the ruptures, both political and intellectual, in the years leading up to World War II. Seeking to explain where contemporary ideas in linguistics come from and how they have been justified, Battle in the Mind Fields investigates the porous interplay of concepts between psychology, philosophy, mathematical logic, and linguistics. Goldsmith and Laks trace theories of thought, self-consciousness, and language from the machine age obsession with mind and matter to the development of analytic philosophy, behaviorism, Gestalt psychology, positivism, and structural linguistics, emphasizing throughout the synthesis and continuity that has brought about progress in our understanding of the human mind. Arguing that it is impossible to understand the history of any of these fields in isolation, Goldsmith and Laks suggest that the ruptures between them arose chiefly from social and institutional circumstances rather than a fundamental disparity of ideas.

Table of Contents

Contents
Review Quotes

Contents

Preface

Chapter 1: Battle in the Mind Fields

In the Beginning
Soft Mentalism, Hard Mentalism
Liberation Moments
Our Kind of Science
The World of Ideas and the World of Social Relations
Generations
Authority
Group Identity
Ideology
Jehovah’s Problem and Noah’s Solution
Credit Problem and Heroes
Mind and Materialism
Conclusions

Chapter 2: The Nineteenth Century and Language

Introduction: History, Typology, Structuralism
Deep Time
Linguistics

Chapter 3: Philosophy and Logic in the Nineteenth Century

Philosophy
Logic: Boole, Frege, Russell

Chapter 4: The Mind Has a Body: Psychology and Intelligent Machines in the Nineteenth Century

Germany, the Homeland of Psychology in the Nineteenth Century
Psychology Comes to the New World
Psychology in France
The Unity of Mankind—and the Differentiation of Types of Humans
The Era of Machines
Moving On

Chapter 5: Psychology, 1900–1940

Structuralism and Functionalism
John B. Watson and Behaviorism
The Second Generation of Behaviorists
Gestalt Psychology
The Period Comes to a Close

Chapter 6: American Linguistics, 1900–1940

Early American Anthropology
Edward Sapir
The Phoneme
Leonard Bloomfield
Sapir and Bloomfield
The Creation of Linguistics as a Profession

Chapter 7: Philosophy, 1900–1940

Edmund Husserl
Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein
Logical Positivism, Logical Empiricism
Conclusions

Chapter 8: Logic, 1900–1940

Three Approaches to the Philosophy of Mathematics
The Chrome Machine of Logic
The Logicians’ Grammar
Conclusions

Chapter 9: European Structuralism, 1920–1940

Nikolai Trubetzkoy
Roman Jakobson
Structuralism and the Prague Linguistic Circle
Phonology
Death, War, and Pestilence

Chapter 10: Conclusions and Prospects

Midnight in the Century
Guideposts
Prospects
Conclusions

Notes
References
Index

Review Quotes

Farrell Ackerman, University of California, San Diego

“In this adventurous and animated volume, Goldsmith and Laks invite us to collaborate with many forgotten and misinterpreted figures who share present passions about the importance of understanding the nature of language and the mind. Reminding us that many earlier thinkers have, in their own inspired and often idiosyncratic ways, anticipated our present directions and identified commanding alternatives, the coauthors demonstrate that the texture and content of older ideas and controversies are an indispensable and rewarding resource for contemporary research at a time of significant reevaluation for the guiding concepts, models, and methods in the field.”

Andrew Nevins, University College London

“We often pay a nod to the fact that our scientific models are molded by the historical and geographic environments in which they are forged. This book provides the authoritative and compelling argumentation that linguistic theory (and, eventually, the cognitive sciences) would have been otherwise if not for Napoleon, the Gospels, positivism, geology, Eurasianism, and numerous other underappreciated currents that influenced the dissolution and re-formation of the intellectual group identities that characterize two centuries of research in the language sciences.”

Ida Toivonen, Carleton University

“Considering that this is really a book about linguistics, the attention and space it gives to other fields is unusual and impressive. I don’t think there is any other work in the mind sciences that compares to the depth and breadth of this one. Battle in the Mind Fields is highly informative, rich, engaging, and a lot of fun to read.”

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History: History of Ideas

Language and Linguistics: General Language and Linguistics

Philosophy: Logic and Philosophy of Language

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