The Hidden Grammar
On the Logos doctrine from Heraclitus through Philo through John's Gospel — the philosophical claim that reality is structured by a rational principle that language participates in — and what it means to take that claim seriously rather than metaphorically
The Hidden Grammar
On Daniel Everett's discovery that the Pirahã language of the Amazon appears to violate Chomsky's proposed linguistic universals, what that implies about the relationship between language, culture, and cognition, and why the debate is about more than linguistics
The Hidden Grammar
On what it would mean if the deep structure underlying all human languages is also the structure underlying reality itself, the esoteric and scientific traditions that have made versions of this claim, and whether the convergence is meaningful
The Hidden Grammar
On universal grammar — the claim that all human languages share a deep structure that is not learned but innate — what it implies about the nature of mind, and why the most controversial linguist of the twentieth century may be pointing at something the sciences of mind have not yet caught up with