This wide-ranging book focuses upon the role that Latin was thought an ideal, universal, constructed language would play in the advancement of learning.

In this extraordinarily original and profound work, Noam Chomsky discusses themes in the study of language and mind since the end of the sixteenth century in order to explain the motivations and methods that underlie his work in linguistics, the science of mind, and even politics. This edition includes a new and specially written introduction by James McGilvray, contextualising the work for the twenty-first century. It has been made more accessible to a larger audience; all the French and German in (...) the original edition has been translated, and the notes and bibliography have been brought up to date. The relationship between the original edition and contemporary biolinguistic work is also explained. This challenging volume is an important contribution to the study of language and mind, and to the history of these studies since the end of the sixteenth century. (shrink)

Collection of essays on different views on epistemology, logic and theories of language in the age of Enlightenment.

Peut-on definir d'un mot, deux siecles qui se sont ecoules en s'interrogeant sur le mot? Pour ce faire, il faudrait connaitre le fin mot du mot. Signe d'une idee, mais de quelle origine et de quelle nature est cette idee? Signe d'une volonte ou d'une passion ou d'une action, mais un tel signe est-il encore representatif? Et s'il est representatif malgre tout, qu'est-ce que cette representation? Une ressemblance, une expression, une signification, une energie, une existence peut-etre... Le langage inquiete l'age (...) classique. Qui le lui rend bien en le restituant a ses origines et a son devenir, a sa nature et a ses fantomes, tantot puissante, tantot clarte, tantot chaleur, parfois rien. Est-ce parce que l'homme s'inquiete de lui-meme? Et puis, d'un mot, comment cerner le contradictoire qui ne cesse de se manifester en ruptures instantes? Le langage, ce soupcon que l'humanite porte en elle... (shrink)

Examines the development iun the period between Descartes and the mid 19th century of the concept of form in semantics.

The description for this book, Eighteenth-Century British Logic and Rhetoric, will be forthcoming.

Many people find themselves dissatisfied with recent linguistic philosophy, and yet know that language has always mattered deeply to philosophy and must in some sense continue to do so. Ian Hacking considers here some dozen case studies in the history of philosophy to show the different ways in which language has been important, and the consequences for the development of the subject. There are chapters on, among others, Hobbes, Berkeley, Russell, Ayer, Wittgenstein, Chomsky, Feyerabend and Davidson. Dr Hacking ends by (...) speculating about the directions in which philosophy and the study of language seem likely to go. The book will provide students with a stimulating, broad survey of problems in the theory of meaning and the development of philosophy, particularly in this century. The topics treated in the philosophy of language are among the central, current concerns of philosophers, and the historical framework makes it possible to introduce concretely and intelligibly all the main theoretical issues. (shrink)