Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal about the Mind

“Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things presents some of the most stimulating ideas on mind and meaning that I have ever read. It . . . has far-reaching consequences and is sure to rattle the foundations of thinking and research in the cognitive sciences. Lakoff’s book is a tremendous piece of scholarship and an intellectual achievement of the first order. . . . No psychologist should be unfamiliar with this book.” —American Journal of Psychology

Within the past decade, research in the cognitive sciences—psychology, linguistics, anthropology, philosophy, and artificial intelligence—has led to a new understanding of human thought. The prevailing view has been that reason is the disembodied manipulation of symbols, but George Lakoff is among the leading advocates of a new view proposing the human reason is imaginative, metaphorical, and intrinsically linked with the human body.

Much of the support for the new, “experientialist” view of thought has come from studies of how humans categorize objects and ideas. It seems common sense that objects are grouped in categories because they share some trait. Such cases exist but are not the norm. The Dyirbal language of Australia is striking, for example, in that the words for women, fire, and dangerous things fall into one category, but not because women are considered fiery or dangerous. Citing a broad spectrum of research, Lakoff offers a sweeping critique of the assumptions about the mind that have prevailed since Aristotle. In proposing his alternative theory, Lakoff illustrates the basic creative process of human thought.

“Its publication should be a major event for cognitive linguistics and should pose a major challenge for cognitive science. In addition, it should have repercussions in a variety of disciplines, ranging from anthropology and psychology to epistemology and the philosophy of science. . . . Lakoff asks: What do categories of language and thought reveal about the human mind? Offering both general theory and minute details, Lakoff shows that categories reveal a great deal.” —American Scientist