by Steven Pinker

Available in paperback from Harper Perennial

 

Professor and director of the Center of Cognitive Neuroscience at MIT, Pinker won wide acclaim with the publication of this book.  As appealing to the general public as it was to the scientific thinkers, this book had a long-time residency on the NY Times Best Seller list.

 

Pinker makes his case for the genetic basis for language, arguing quite credibly that humans are hard-wired for language and grammar.  Dubious or not, the reader will find much fascinating detail; and ultimately probably agree that Pinker has successfully made his case.

 

I read this book at its first publication in 1994 and immediately saw its relevancy to mathematics acquisistion and learning in general.  Always the scientists, Pinker avoids almost any generalizations not immediately supported by data.  So he sidesteps the idea that mathematics itself can be viewed as a language and that the processes of language development could be directed at mathematics acquisition ... if math were to be taught properly.

 

More to the point, the book also solidified my idea that language is probably the most difficult thing to learn, far more difficult in structure and rules than those of medicine or flying a rocketship.  But language is taught in a manner consonant with how our brains are wired to learn, tapping directly into the intuitive processes; whereas medicine and piloting rocketships are taught in a manner totally contrary to everything that makes sense.  It was after reading this book that my method of instruction began re-developing.

available in paperback from Harper Perennial (December 8, 1999)

 

Originally printed in 1997, this book was considered groundbreaking for its exposure of the fallacies it exposed regarding intellectual and artistic development.  More shocking, however, is that all Claxton really did in his book was show how much research had been ignored by contemporary thinkers.  Some of the research occurred much early than the 1950's.  For example, there is a small section on the impossibility of a committee to produce almost anything of quality.  Has that stopped every corporation on the planet from having regular brainstorming sessions?

 

I was tickled by the number of Nobel Prize winners and famous author and artists who asserted that their work was not the result of thinking.

 

Read the book.  It's a fast, easy read, with compellig logic and solid research.

by Gerd Gigenrenzer

Available in paperback from Penguin

 

Gigenrenzer, director of the Max Planck Institute, starts his book with a remarkable assertion:  Intuitive thinking will beat out data-based reasoning in the majority of time-constrained decision-making situations.  The evidence he presents comes from pure research and has led to ground-breaking lines of thought.

 

Written for the lay audience, the book is simple, clear, and hard to put down.  It should also change your way of thinking.

 

 

Despite its being placed solidly in the world of business, the ideas are universal; and clear thinkers can easily see their translation into the world of education ... or almost anywhere else.  Although a bit dry, the book is filled with direct references to research that will be interesting to the reader who wants to see what is going on out there.

 

 

 

 

The most recent of the books recommended here, it would be worthwhile to read some of the earlier books first, just to add perspective to what Kahneman has to offer.