Research Catalog

Title

Universals of human thought : some African evidence / edited by Barbara Lloyd, John Gay.

Publication

Cambridge [England] ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 1981.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Additional Authors

• Lloyd, Barbara Bloom.
• Gay, John.
• University of Cambridge. African Studies Centre.

Description

xxiii, 273 pages : illustrations; 24 cm

Summary

The theme of universals has attracted a great deal of research and speculation in the last decade. Psychologists and linguists in particular have attempted to identify substantive universals that underlie the social diversity across cultures which anthropologists have documented. These efforts are still inconclusive, and controversial, but have at least served to provide a necessary antidote to certain narrow forms of relativism and empiricism that had become current, and social scientists generally have a crucial interest in the success or failure of the attempt. The contributors to this volume all focus on the relevant data in Africa to explain and test the major questions at issue. The book is divided into three main sections, dealing respectively with perception, cognitive development and language. There is also a general review and prospectus by Jerome Bruner, and a wide-ranging introduction to the philosophical background by Ernest Gellner.

Subject

• Universals (Philosophy) > Congresses
• Thought and thinking > Congresses
• Philosophy, African > Congresses
• Philosophy, African
• Thought and thinking
• Universals (Philosophy)
• Denken
• Kognitive Entwicklung
• Sprachliche Universalien
• Universalien
• Wahrnehmung
• Universaux
• Cognition et culture
• Perception

Genre/Form

• Congress
• Conference papers and proceedings.
• Actes de congrès.

Note

• Based on a conference held by the African Studies Centre of the University of Cambridge at Clare Hall, April 14-15, 1975.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographies and indexes.

Contents

Michael Ogbolu Okonji : African psychologist / Herman A. Witkin -- General introduction : relativism and universals / Ernest Gellner -- Pictorial perception and the problem of universals / Gustav Jahoda -- Tallensi children's drawings / Meyer Fortes -- Space and community behaviour : a discussion of the form and function of spatial order in settlements / Roland Fletcher -- Taxonomic and multi-dimensional representations of reality / John Gay -- "Strong" and "weak" universals : sensori-motor intelligence and concrete operations / Pierre Dasen -- Psychological differentation / Obgolu Okonji -- Cognitive development, education and social mobility / Barbara Lloyd -- Language and learning : some observations on the linguistic determination of cognitive processes / Nigel Lemon -- The formation of relative clauses / Bernard Comrie -- Literacy and literature / Ruth Finnegan -- Review and prospectus / Jerome Bruner.

ISBN

• 0521229537
• 0521298180
• 9780521229531
• 9780521298186

LCCN

79041471

OCLC

• ocm06015741
• 6015741
• SCSB-69791

Owning Institutions

Princeton University Library