The Senses still

Sample

Gustav Jahoda

The relationship between "mind" and "culture" has become a prominent - and fashionable - issue in psychology during the last quarter of the twentieth century. The conflict is between those who see the human mind as being generated from, and an intimate part of, culture and those, usually termed cognitivists, who view the mind as essentially separate from the environment. Gustav Jahoda traces the historical origins of this conflict to demonstrate that thinkers' preoccupation with the relationship between mind and culture is a very old one. The salient issues began to crystallize three centuries ago in Europe in the form of two distinct traditions whose contrasting conceptions of human nature and the human mind still remain the focus of current debates. The dominant one was produced by the scientific approach that had proved so successful in the physical realm. This view, associated with the Enlightenment, holds that mind is an essential part of nature and subject to its fixed laws. As a result of the influence of external factors such as climate and ecology, mind creates culture but remains essentially unchanged. The opposite view, which dates back to Vico and was espoused by anti-Enlightenment thinkers, is that the mind is separate from nature, an entity that both creates and is extensively modified by culture in a constant cycle of mutual determination. The growing prestige of experimental psychology has led to a heated debate between supporters of the rival traditions: is psychology a science or a cultural discipline? Jahoda identifies the current form of this debate as but a phase in psychology's long fascination with the role that culture plays in the formation of the mind. This book is a formidable achievement by one of Europe's most distinguished and erudite psychologists.

Sample

Linda Flower

Based on five years of close observation of students, writing and collaborative planning -- the practice in which student writers take the roles of planner and supporter to help each other develop a more rhetorically sophisticated writing plan --foremost cognitive composition researcher Linda Flower redefines writing in terms of an interactive social and cognitive process and proposes a convincing and compelling theory of the construction of negotiated meaning. Flower seeks to describe how writers construct meaning. Supported by the emerging body of social and cognitive research in rhetoric, education, and psychology, she portrays meaning making as a literate act and a constructive process. She challenges traditional definitions of literacy, adding to that concept the elements of social literate practices and personal literate acts. In Flowerʹs view, this social cognitive process is a source of tension and conflict among the multiple forces that shape meaning: the social and cultural context, the demands of discourse, and the writerʹs own goals and knowledge. -- Publisher description.

Sample

Lisa Genova

Two women meet by accident on a Nantucket beach and are drawn into a friendship. Olivia is a young mother whose eight-year-old severely autistic son has recently died. She comes to the island in a trial separation to try and make sense of the tragedy of her Anthony's short life. Beth, a stay-at-home mother of three, is also recently separated after discovering her husband's long-term infidelity.

Sample

S.J. Watson

Without her husband's knowledge, Christine, whose memory is damaged by a long-ago accident, is treated by a neurologist who helps her to remember her former self through journal entries until inconsistencies begin to emerge, raising disturbing questions.