Book reviewBattle in the Mind Fields. . Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2019. 725 pp. ISBN 978-0-226-55080-0 (HB) $ 45.00 (HB)
Table of contents
John Goldsmith and Bernard Laks have written a wonderful book. Original and forceful in its methodology, conscious of the challenge it represents for its potential readers, Battle in the Mind Fields is all at once convincing, coherent, and entertaining. The book’s theme and scope are set out clearly in the excellent introduction (Chapter 1): the authors wish to listen in on the manifold conversations held during the 19th and 20th centuries by significant scholars from various disciplines (anthropology, linguistics, mathematical logic, philosophy, and psychology); to auscultate the often testy handover of knowledge between scholarly generations; and, consequently, to paint a broad picture of the history of the language sciences that highlights how it was systematically impacted by ideas, movements, and trends from across the spectrum of the mind sciences. Blending methods from the history of ideas, intellectual history, sociology of science, as well as a networked approach to the study of intellectual and cultural transfers, Goldsmith and Laks successfully produce a dense, lively fresco that both demonstrates and makes the case for the resolutely interdisciplinary, transnational and contextual approach to historiography they advocate.
References
