Cognitive Dimensions of Social Science The Way We Think About Politics, Economics, Law, and Society

by Turner, Mark

• ISBN13: 9780195165395
• ISBN10: 019516539X
• eBook ISBN(s): 9780199760619
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-03-27
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• More Book Details

Summary

What will be the future of social science? Where exactly do we stand, and where do we go from here? What kinds of problems should we be addressing, with what kinds of approaches and arguments? In Cognitive Dimensions of Social Science, Mark Turner offers an answer to these pressing questions:social science is headed toward convergence with cognitive science. Together they will give us a new and better approach to the study of what human beings are, what human beings do, what kind of mind they have, and how that mind developed over the history of the species. Turner, one of theoriginators of the cognitive scientific theory of conceptual integration, here explores how the application of that theory enriches the social scientific study of meaning, culture, identity, reason, choice, judgment, decision, innovation, and invention. About fifty thousand years ago, humans made a spectacular advance: they became cognitively modern. This development made possible the invention of the vast range of knowledge, practices, and institutions that social scientists try to explain. For Turner, the anchor of all social science -anthropology, political science, sociology, economics - must be the study of the cognitively modern human mind. In this book, Turner moves the study of those extraordinary mental powers to the center of social scientific research and analysis.

Author Biography

Mark Turner is Institute Professor and Professor and Chair of Cognitive Science at Case Western Reserve University.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	p. v
Cognitive Dimensions of Social Science	p. 2
Deep Play	p. 3
Reason	p. 60
Choice	p. 85
Analogy	p. 119
Descent of Meaning	p. 137
Cognitive Social Science	p. 152
Some Features of Complex Adaptive Systems	p. 157
What is a Conceptual Schema?	p. 159
Conceptual Integration and Math	p. 163
Notes	p. 169
References	p. 171
Index	p. 179
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