Review " Stuff of Thought"

A picture is worth thousand words but an imprecise verbal description can lead to formation of a various mental images. Description about space should be proper and admirable, yet it is perceived by different people in different ways. Imprecision in verbal description of space has serious consequences like airplane accidents.
Discrepancy between the movement in space and the language in space occurs in brain. Brain circuit is complex with the visual brain there is “what” system which goes back to front. Visual brain registers letters, words, and pictures. Damage to this part can cause dyslexia. In our brain from back to top where system which helps keep track of objects locations.

“What” system, “where”system are duplicated left and right. In English we can use about eighty prepositions and some nouns to describe the space. But the difference in the description of an object in space comes due to changes in the geometry and shape of the object.
Ideally, there are only six pieces of information required to locate an object in space i.e. spacial positions. Disparity exists because of difference between geometry of shape and geometry of the location. Specifying a shape of an object requires many pieces of information. But location in space is relatively easy. Spatial terms are highly polysemous. Spatial prepositions over can refer to a path of matrix.

Spatial distinctions are digital and binary. For example, words that are used to describe such as “here”, “there”, “either-or”. Topological concepts coded in language are contact, containment, and attachment. Every matter has height, length, breadth but pretend it doesn’t have any dimensions.

I tried to experiment this notion on my friend , whom I asked to describe a stapler that in space to me as telling to me on phone how it looks , so that I have to find it once I enter the room.
I showed her the stapler, and asked her to describe it as if she was telling it to me over phone imagining that she and I don’t know what the object is and that the stapler is hanging in space with no gravity!
1) In her words “ Ujwala ,There is some black rectangular thing in the room with
steel layer inside it. Looks like movable because there is a shaft which joins of one its two ends.”
I wondered if I could really figure it out what it is when I enter the room.
Pinker stated in the book that, one reason for difference in the descriptions is due to difference in the languages spoken.
My friend is non- native English speaker. Also, considering the fact that the she knows me, I have asked a stranger to describe the same.
2) I asked a student (a native English speaker) in the helpdesk in library the same thing, and she would tell me that she would describe the color, shape, dimension, things around it, functionality if she could use it. When I asked her , how she would actually say that, she told me “ there is a three dimensional (!!) two long bars attached at on one joint”

I wonder if they would have told me the same if the situation was more serious.
Schematic dimensionality of objects affects not only how we visualize them but also how we reason about them. Our minds can focus on the boundaries of the object as if they are the objects themselves.
By studying the ways verbs work, for instance, we can see how our minds categories actions. It turns out, curiously, that actions that work because of gravity are classified differently from those that use other kinds of force. For example we can "pour wine into the glass" but not "fill wine into the glass". We can extend the range of things we talk about. For example, note the spatial meanings of "inflation", "bottleneck" and "decline". We may be thinking about abstract matters, but we can't manage without the help of simple spatial notions. Different peoples think differently because brought up to speak different languages and hail from different ethnicity.

A word may have the identical conventional meaning in different descriptions and yet be taken as denoting very different things. This reminds me of a book that I have read recently in which it is mentioned that, When you speak to somebody there is a difference between “ what you think you have conveyed ” and “what you have actually conveyed” .When you listen to somebody “What you think of you have understood” and “ What you have actually understood”. This gap arises when you speak because of the wordings.

Pinker argues that all humans share a universal "language of thought" containing basic concepts of space, time, force and sorts of stuff. Not all spoken languages express these categories using identical grammatical constructions, but the same linguistic oddities keep popping up in unrelated languages and all societies have some way of marking these fundamental distinctions.


Pinker’s “ Stuff of thought “ is really thought provoking. These differences in describing and perceiving of the things or situations are critical in decision making and have a huge impact when decisions are made.