From the point of view of our own experiences as individuals, the concepts of self and identity make sense, seem obvious, are in fact self-evident. But are they real? What substance do they have beyond the sounds and images (words as reference) we’ve assigned to them and situated within a network of other audio and […]
Tag: culture
Barbara J. King (NPR) | Culture, not biology, shapes language • Debating language: The role of culture And biology (Part 2)
Cognition + Culture + Communication = Language With this formula as shorthand, in his new book Language: The Cultural Tool, linguist Dan Everett argues that the variability in human cultural life explains the variability in human languages. Reference Barbara J. King (NPR) | Culture, not biology, shapes language Barbara J. King (NPR) | Debating language: […]
Chicago Humanities Festival 2013 | Animal: What makes us human
Are humans animals? Not long ago, the question produced a predictable standoff. Now it is the start of a fascinating conversation. The 24th Chicago Humanities Festival takes this new exchange of ideas out of the academy and into the public. We explore what it means to think about culture biologically, about biology culturally, and about […]
How culture affects the ways we learn to organize the world
Culture, perspective, and systems In this 2012 Clever Apes: Nature and Human Nature podcast, scientists described research comparing the ways Native and non-Native children learn to think about the world. Although non-Native children’s thinking involved hierarchical categories (organizing by type), Native children’s thinking involved ecological or “systems-level” principles (organizing by relationships). These represent very different […]
