This late scientist tries to make sense of the supposedly unique human characteristic of linguistics. He discusses the roles of Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace at length in a way that flatters the former. Then he is on to the life of the rogue Noam Chomski with his various theories of linguistics including his insistence on recurrsion, then it’s denial.
I did not understand a lot of the discussion, but it seems to me that there is something self-limiting about using words to try to understand the science of using words. And we are definitely not alone in linguistics, although we seem to be less able to understand the languages of some animals than they do of ours. “Sit.” “Lie down.”
Economics is traditionally called The Dismal Science, but I think the term should be reserved for linguistics- or perhaps for nutrition.
The best thing about this audiobook is its brevity.
2/5
The Passionate Reader 