Keywords In and Out of Context

is the subtitle of Brian O’Connor’s 1996 book Explorations in Indexing and Abstracting, which I wish I had read earlier in my doctoral studies, though it had a great impact on me when I did encounter it later (since much of my career had involved indexing and abstracting for various publishers). In any event, he Continue reading

I didn’t include the human sense of smell in my list of key sensory capabilities in Chapter 1 of my book, because: 1. I was a victim of the common misconception, apparently first promulgated by French physician Pierre Paul Broca in the 19th century, that our olfactory bulbs are inferior to those of other mammals Continue reading

Wilson and Golonka (2013) wrote a highly-cited theoretical article in Frontiers of Psychology using the title above, with an unusually wide coverage of “cognition” in animals, people, and robots, so it’s worth a look (though I believe that the “we” in the subtitle refers only to people!) The main topic of my own Chapter 1 Continue reading

“The Faculty of Language” by Hauser, Chomsky, and Fitch with its wonderful subtitle (“What Is It, Who Has It, and How Did It Evolve?”) has garnered so many citations since its 2002 publication in Science that it certainly doesn’t need one from me (though of course it got one) so here instead I would mention Continue reading

I referred to Jerome Bruner’s “Routes to Reference” (1998) briefly in Chapter 1 of my book, but didn’t deal with it in the depth it deserves, with its drawing together of so many important threads, from infant pointing, to Peirce’s notion of “interpretant”, to “plot” as the connection between children’s narrative play and Aristotle’s concept Continue reading

A surprisingly overlooked and undercited 2009 piece in American Art by University of Pennsylvania art historian Dr. Michael Leja is an early and eloquent investigation of the cultural role of the keyword in the online environment. He wrote, “We are entering a new phase in the commercialization and commodification of language, and as it increasingly Continue reading