Clever Geek Handbook
4 January 2026

Investment Gurus

Recommendation

Peter Tanous features interviews with 18 individuals he identifies as top, common stock investment consultants - or "gurus." His choices are based on his work as a consultant identifying investment advisers for corporations. The consultants he selected for this book represent the major stock investing approaches as growth, value or momentum investors. The interview format lets them speak for themselves. He briefly introduces the book with a primer on basic investment terms and principles, and a summary of major themes. BooksInShort finds the range of views shown very helpful, but notes that the book suffers from overwriting and a lack of focus and editing. Some tightening would help highlight the main points in the long interviews. The introduction and conclusion are long and general, and a clearer, more detailed summary would be very welcome. Yet, the book offers a lot of information for the average serious investor, much of it straight from the mouths of some very important horses.

Take-Aways

  • Common stocks are the best investment over time. Since the 1920s, they have performed better than any other asset.
  • Professor William Sharpe’s "Sharpe ratio" measures how much extra return you gain based on the risk you are willing to take.
  • Active investors pick stocks they think will perform well; passive investors buy through index funds that reflect overall market performance.
  • The best measure of risk is volatility; high volatility equals high risk.
  • The two major investment styles are growth and value investing.
  • Growth managers look for a high growth trend in the sales and earnings of a stock.
  • High growth stocks typically have a higher P/E ratio.
  • Value managers look for bargains in underpriced stocks that seem likely to turn around.
  • Momentum investors follow trends and invest when they think momentum is in their favor.
  • Some management gurus can outperform the market over time since the market is not perfectly efficient. They gain an advantage through research and judgment.

Summary

The Major Types of Investment Advisors

Common stocks are the best investment over time. Since the early 1920s, they have performed better than any other type of asset. But with stocks, or any other investment choice, weigh risk relative to return. Nobel prize-winning investment guru, Professor William Sharpe, has developed the "Sharpe ratio," which measures how much extra return you gain based on the risk you are willing to take. The higher the number, the more return you are getting for the risk you are taking - no matter how high or low that risk is.

The Basic Types of Investing

When you select an investment manager, first decide on the best investment approach for you. However, look beyond the manager’s investment approach and average annual return, because that could conceal volatility. Look at how returns translate into real dollars and real earnings. Select a manager with a consistent record over time.

“The efficient market theory is flawed. There are simply too many examples of stocks that were discovered by a great manager before anyone else knew what was going on.”

Be aware of the important distinction between active and passive investing. If you are an active investor, you pick stocks because you think they will perform well. Active managers seek to beat the market, either by greater returns or less risk. A passive investor buys the market, a strategy followed by managers of index funds. These funds try to reflect the performance of the overall market. Academic gurus often support passive investing, and don’t believe you can consistently beat the market, except due to luck.

“One thing is certain: if you buy growth stocks and pay a correspondingly high price for the privilege, if something goes wrong, you are going to suffer swiftly and painfully. A high price-earnings ratio has little tolerance for disappointment.”

While the industry has no completely foolproof way to measure risk, its best measurement is "volatility," the range of price or value movement in a stock, a portfolio, or the market as a whole. The greater the range of movement in a price, the higher your risk. The "alpha" measure of a stock calculates return against risk, and measures the amount of return that is not due to the market itself. It tells you the amount of value added by the manager of a fund. The "beta" of a stock measures its volatility compared with the overall market. The Standard and Poor’s 500 index is considered a benchmark for measuring this factor.

“In the top down approach the analyst looks first at the company, identifying it usually because it is so attractively priced on its own merits. Value investors almost invariably use this approach.”

Standard deviation, another measure of investment risk, measures a portfolio’s volatility against itself, on a month-to-month basis. If it’s high, the stock is more volatile and, therefore, more risky. Using these measurements will help you assess how well your portfolio is doing, relative to the market, your return and the amount of risk you are taking.

Investment Styles of the Investment Gurus

Different investment managers have different styles. The major styles are:

  • Growth managers look for a high growth trend in the sales and earnings of the stocks they buy. They commonly invest in industries with strong growth trends. Typically, these growth stocks have higher price/earnings (P/E) ratios, since investors expect their growth to continue so that the stock eventually catches up with this high valuation, although this outcome is uncertain. You will pay more for such a stock, but if problems develop, the stock price often will fall dramatically. In assessing companies for growth, managers look for good industry fundamentals, a high level of earnings and sales growth and a reasonable P/E.
  • Value managers look for bargains, basically under-priced stocks. As an investor, you can do very well when these stocks turn around, although it is hard to know the timing. You need patience. Managers look for a stock with a low price-earnings ratio, "hidden assets" and a discount price, compared to book value. Generally, over the past 50 years, value stocks have provided higher returns than growth stocks. However, having both is good.
  • Momentum investors follow trends. Momentum managers jump on board when they feel the market’s momentum is in their favor, and - if they are skillful - they can do very well in good markets. However, they have to be quick in their timing. Typically, they tend to be more interested in stocks hitting new highs than new lows, since they look for stocks with a "strong upward price momentum."
  • Top-down investment managers start by looking at the big picture, beginning with the overall economy, to decide whether this is a good time to buy or not. Then, they look for attractive industries and, subsequently, for attractive stocks within these industries.
  • Bottom-up investment managers try to identify companies that are attractively priced due to their own merits. Typically, value investors take this approach.

Meeting the Investment Gurus

Investment gurus include growth, value and momentum investors. They include:

  • Michael Price, Mutual Shares - Price is one of the most successful value-investing managers. He looks at every merger announcement, since this "tells you what businessmen are willing to pay for a business." This price is the "best indication of value."
  • Richard H. Driehaus, Driehaus Capital Management, Inc. - Driehaus, known primarily for momentum investing, is especially interested in small-cap stocks (companies with market capitalization of less than $500 million). He feels that earnings on winners matter most, along with how quickly you cut your losses on the stocks that don’t perform. Tactically, he is more of a bottom-up player.
  • Mario Gabelli, Gabelli Funds, Inc. - Value investor Gabelli is known for identifying companies selling well below market value. He combines value investing with a "catalyst" approach, wherein he examines a particular time period for some event that will narrow the spread between private market value and stock price.
  • William F. Sharpe, Nobel Laureate, Professor of Finance, Standard University Graduate School of Business - Sharpe is an academic most known for creating the Sharpe ratio, a widely known measurement used to assess risk-adjusted investment return.
  • Peter Lynch, retired manager, Fidelity Magellan Fund - Lynch is known for his consistently high return of 30% over a period between 1977 and 1990. He has growth bias, but chooses both value and growth stocks. The goal is to have "enough all-stars to counteract the poor performers."
  • Laura J. Sloate, Sloate, Weisman, Murray & Co. - Though blind since she was six years old, Sloate led her firm to more than 20% returns over a seven-year period ending in 1995. She seeks a catalyst to bring out a firm’s value, such as a management change.
  • Scott Sterling Johnson, Sterling Johnston Capital Management - Johnson specializes in small-capitalization emerging growth stocks with a minimum of 35% earnings growth and a maximum of $750 million in market capitalization. He looks for a great product, unique service, dynamic management or other quality that gives a company a competitive advantage. He particularly enjoys the "hunt" for these new companies.
  • Eugene Fama, Professor of Finance, University of Chicago Graduate School - Fama is known for his work on efficient capital markets. He believes stocks will become correctly priced, since what is publicly known about them is reflected in their market price. This means that over time, you will never do better than the markets, so active management generally does not pay. For instance, when Fama researched top performing fund groups for ten years after 1976, they only had a 50-50 chance of being in the top half of mutual fund performance for the next ten years.
  • Bruce Sherman, Private Capital Management - Sherman earned 25% returns over a five-year period ending in 1995, versus 17% for the S&P 500 index. His approach is to carefully study a company, including spending time with the CEO and CFO asking serious questions and looking at accounting fundamentals. He looks for catalysts that will turn a cheap stock around, such as new technology developments.
  • Eric Ryback, Lindner Funds - Ryback purchases high-yield bonds after assessing the "intrinsic value" of a company. After figuring out what the company is worth, he tries to buy that security at a discount. He also uses the technique of "cornering the sinker" to own an entire issue of bonds selling at a low amount relative to what they are worth.
  • Merton Miller, Nobel Laureate, Professor Emeritus of Finance, University of Chicago Graduate School of Business - Miller believes in passive investing for most investors on the grounds that the market is a good source of information on stock prices. In his view, everyone has a little bit of information and the market pulls together that information, evaluates it, and translates into prices. Most people do better by buying a share of the whole market than trying to outguess it.
  • Foster Friess, The Brandywine Fund - Friess gathers information on companies through a network of large and small brokers and consultants. When investigating a company, his firm meets with its executives, competitors and customers. The firm uses this information to support a growth-oriented, bottom-up style and seeks growth trends, buying dynamic companies with a 60% to 70% upside.
  • Rex Sinquefield, Chairman, Dimensional Fund Advisors, Inc. - Sinquefield’s firm employs different vehicles, with one fund that responds like the S&P 500, another that corresponds to S&P’s value stocks and other funds that reflect the performance of small-cap stocks. This builds an optimal portfolio based on a passive investment approach.
  • John Ballen, Manager, FMF Emerging Growth Fund - Ballen uses a research-intensive approach to buy a stock early in the game. He seeks growth companies, focusing on small firms before others recognize them. He tries to invest in companies with long-range competitive advantages just before the companies grow.
  • Roger F. Murray, S. Sloan Colt Professor Emeritus, Columbia University Graduate School of Business - Murray advocates value investing and looks for real earning power by estimating a stock’s intrinsic value. He urges ordinary investors to buy the markets rather than stocks or managers, since most people don’t have time to make informed choices.
  • Robert B. Gillam, McKinley Capital Management, Inc. - Though located in Anchorage, Alaska, Gillam has been successful using modern portfolio theory, including quantitative computer models. He combines quantitative analysis and a momentum approach, seeking industrial groups with excess returns. He uses a database with 13,000 stocks to make specific choices.
  • David E. Shaw, D.E. Shaw & Company - Shaw’s firm uses higher mathematics to find high-performance trades and arbitrage deals. The "king of the quants" uses a computer program and algorithms to build an optimal risk vs. return portfolio for each investor.

Applying the Advice

Efficient market theorists suggest that beating the market is the effect of normal distribution. Most studies show that the great managers of today will become "the has-beens of tomorrow." Still, in many cases, a great manager can discover a stock before someone else. Some management gurus outperform the market over time because the market is not perfectly efficient. It is "constantly in the process of becoming efficient." Sometimes, a skilled manager can see the changes coming in the market or in a particular stock. This requires the ability to "identify and stay with the winners and quickly shed the losers." Thus, if you put in the time and effort, you can beat the market, although you will have better odds of finding the right investment if you get a guru to do it for you.

About the Author

Peter J. Tanous , a Washington, D.C., registered investment advisor, is President of Lynx Investment Advisory, Inc. He provides consulting services to institutions and individuals on how to select and monitor a money manager. Before founding Lynx, Tanous was Executive Vice President and a director of Bank Audi (USA) in New York City.

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Investment Gurus

Book Investment Gurus

A Road Map to Wealth from the World's Best Money Managers

FT Prentice Hall,
 


4 January 2026

The Technology Machine

Recommendation

Patricia A. Moody and Richard E. Morley take a fascinating trip into the future, the not-too distant future, by exploring what manufacturing and product delivery to consumers will look like in the year 2020. By discussing past and current advances, the authors articulately present convincing arguments for their ideas with great zest. Don’t worry, you won’t find impenetrable technological prose here, quite the contrary. Instead, you’ll find visions of point-of-consumption manufacturing, small work groups made up of people who live near their job sites and biotechnology that enables customized creation of replacement body parts. Gene Bylinsky of Fortune magazine calls this well-received volume, "a beautifully written, insightful and important new book... your best guide to success" in the 21st century. BooksInShort recommends this book to forward-looking managers who understand that, even in the complex future, the main rule will be: Keep it simple.

Take-Aways

  • Complex manufacturing systems will lead to simple manufacturing solutions.
  • The core of future growth lies in technology, knowledge and individual experience.
  • Real-time online systems will link customers and suppliers.
  • Customer-designed, point-of-consumption, product manufacturing will drive businesses.
  • In the future, successful organizations will take a holistic approach.
  • Breakthrough technologies will increase productivity and enable functionality and post-installation optimization.
  • Machines will not run every operation.
  • Wild-card events will affect future technologies as they have influenced past technologies.
  • Businesses are complex systems that must adapt to survive.
  • Knowledge will be currency.

Summary

The Technology Machine in Action

Autonomous agents, emergent systems and complexity theory will change the way you live and work in the 21st century. Today’s manufacturing and production systems will grow more and more complicated, leading the science of complexity to produce paradoxically simple solutions by the year 2020. Technology, knowledge and individual experience are at the core of this transition.

"The biggest areas of opportunity lie ahead of and after manufacturing. Look at the areas that feed and draw on the manufacturing function - all the places where idea transfer and development barriers stand in the way of ultimate customer fulfillment

The lingering problems that beset today’s manufacturers are rooted in three bad business habits: shortsightedness, restrictive structures and unbalanced improvement fads. Business must leave those faults behind. The technologies that will dominate the business world in the future will lead customers and suppliers to be linked by real-time online systems. Business will be driven by customer-designed, point-of-consumption replication of the product. The successful future organization will take a holistic approach and will look nothing like the "sweatshop-like" companies of the past.

“Government regulatory groups and some investors do not understand the inevitable cycle of technology birth, growth and passing.”

Many visions of the future are distorted and show machine intelligence running every operation. That is simply not going to happen. Instead, people will shape technology that works with their intelligence, values, technical mastery and quest for constant innovation. Breakthrough technologies will have to perform four key functions: increase productivity, enable functionality, enable the user and enable post-installation optimization, survivability, market share and user lock-in.

Current visionary leaders to keep an eye on in the future include:

Ken Iverson - chairman of Nucor Steel, a technologist who changed the way steel is made and launched a new technology. Gordon Lankton - of Nypro, an engineer who implemented real-time in-line process control to make very high-quality plastics and who continues his enthusiastic support of workforce improvement from the ground up. Gene Kirila - president and founder of Pyramid Systems in Greenville, Penn., who creates technology solutions where none existed before.

Predicting the Future

How accurate can future predictions be? The future, as always, contains many unknown wild cards. Look at this list of predictions published in 1901 in Houchi News, a leading Japanese newspaper. Some 100 years later, 17.5 of these 24 predictions (73%) have come true.

  • Worldwide wireless telephone.
  • Worldwide color photo instant transfer.
  • Extinct wild animals.
  • Green Sahara.
  • Rise of China, Japan and Africa.
  • Round-the-world trip in seven days, global travel for everyone.
  • Warships in the air.
  • Extermination of flies and fleas.
  • Air conditioning.
  • Cultivation of tropical plants in Greenland using electricity.
  • Advanced voice transmitter, talk over a distance of 10 miles.
  • Picture telephone and shopping by picture telephone.
  • Electricity as fuel.
  • Bullet train 2.5 hours between Tokyo and Kobe.
  • Rubber-tire trains in the air and under the ground.
  • Worldwide railroad network.
  • Natural disaster control.
  • Everybody taller than six feet.
  • Electric needle health treatment without pain or medicine.
  • Automobiles without horse.
  • Animal language literacy.
  • Advanced education.
  • Countrywide electricity distribution.
“Although technological progress has in the past owed much to achievements in hardware, in the future, success will depend on large software-intensive products and these products will have tasks and goals much harder to understand than today’s hardware-related products.”

What predictions can be made about the 21st century? Here are a few that will be enabled by technology breakthroughs:

  • Technology will drive social structures, communications and manufacturing.
  • Mass production will give way to fully distributed or point-of-sale manufacturing.
  • Intellectual property law will boom and dominate Internet exchange and all other information media, because ideas will be your currency.
  • The manufacturing, ground support, antennas, communications and control of satellites will be big business.
  • People will live where they work, thus ending the commuter traffic jam.
  • Television will be dead because downloads and uploads through Internet communications boxes will produce customized entertainment and communications.
  • Computers will be 10,000 times more powerful.
  • Software will be dead and embedded intelligence will rule.
  • Biotechnology allows your DNA to be used to create spare body parts for you.
  • Complex adaptive systems and intelligent agents - not humans - will run railroads, airports, banking and other data-rich and extremely dynamic operations.
  • Behavioral modification through drugs will offer good health, stress relief, weight control, pain treatment and happiness. Drugs will mold docile workers and well-trained, highly educated, multiple-tasking professionals. The science of management - how and what drugs to deliver to which workers - will become the science of pharmacopias.

The Programmable Logic Controller (PLC)

The Programmable Logic Controller was invented more than 30 years ago; the first one is now housed at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. It revolutionized how things are made and even changed factory design. "This box of software encased in cast-iron could generate the same results as 50 feet of cabinets, relays and miles of wires," explains its inventor Richard E. Morley. The PLC offered reliable and consistent process control for the first time.

“Adaptive systems fit the system to the problem.”

Not all manufacturing innovations have simplified the manufacturing process the way the PLC did. Many innovations have managed to make things even more complicated because of labor restrictions, archaic purchasing practices, incorrect approaches to filling critical jobs on the manufacturing floor, CEOs with no technical understanding and the 1980’s problem of "too much automation, too soon."

Intelligent Systems: Complex Adaptive Systems

Murray Cell-Mann, Nobel-prize-winning physicist and founder of the Santa Fe Institute, coined the phrase "complex adaptive systems." "We are interested in the relation between the simple underlying laws of nature and the complex phenomena of which we are a part," he explained. "When we call something complex, we don’t mean random. A complex adaptive system takes a stream of data about the world. The data includes its current and previous behavior and the consequences. The system takes all the regularities that it notes in that data stream and compresses them into a schema (model), a highly compressed description. The schema can undergo change and mutation; it can combine with additional data from the real world and be used for prediction of behavior in the real world, because all of these will have real world consequences."

“The technology machine will be built on intelligence, simplicity and pure process, a new way of building distributed manufacturing production networks.”

Businesses are complex adaptive systems. They adapt to survive. A complex adaptive system is inherently an intelligent system. When you fit a system to the problem, you remain flexible and therefore adaptive. You are using intelligence to make the adaptations. All complex adaptive systems have these characteristics in common: interacting agents, emergent phenomena, distributed control, an open environment, probabilistic events, a non-equilibrium and non-linear system, the ability to co-evolve adaptively and the capacity to self-regulate.

Managing the Technology Machine

Technology-smart businesses will be run by these rules:

  • Hire top people.
  • Have strong leaders.
  • Deliver a message from on high.
  • Have an "enemy" that energizes your workers against the competition.
  • Ship products.
  • View work as the reward.
  • Advocate complete local control.
  • Form small work groups of no more than seven people.
  • Avoid surprises.
  • Use metrics of performance.
  • Keep outsiders out.
  • Base pay on performance, not longevity.
“Third-world countries with emerging technology power, such as China and Pakistan, will be sources of high-tech profits.”

The driving ambition of the successful enterprise won’t just be making money; it will be a passion to show the world the right way to do things.

Working and Living in the Future

Technology managers face the challenge of selecting the right technologies to win. Winning managers will find the right balance between human wisdom and governance vs. the intelligent machines required to run the enterprise of the future. Any organization that is going to thrive must be run in an atmosphere of trust, opportunity and inspiration, not fear and survival. Any company that forgets this simple idea is doomed, even the one with the most advanced and successful technology.

“We have no choice but to fit the system to the problem.”

Expect the factory of the year 2020 to look more like an air traffic control center or a laboratory that operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Technology leaders will be scientists, chemists, physicists, engineers and other knowledge-intensive workers.

Historically, villages located manufacturing sites in the location of raw materials. Later, factories were located based on the availability of labor. In the future, societies will locate manufacturing facilities at the point of consumption, with no inventory in the process. By 2020, strawberries will be grown and harvested in the supermarket, cars will be assembled on demand at the dealer’s showroom and custom clothing will be cut and sewn on-site.

“All the new approaches spring from the bottom up, rather than top down.”

All of these manufacturing changes will contribute to excellence in customer fulfillment and satisfaction, supported by excellent communications. Simplicity will rule.

About the Authors

Patricia E. Moody is the former editor of Target magazine. She is a manufacturing management consultant and writer with more than 25 years of industry experience. Her client list includes Solectron, Motorola, Johnson & Johnson and Mead Corporation. Richard E. Morley , the CEO of Flavors Technology, Inc., is the founder or co-founder of more than ten companies, including Modicon and Andover Controls.

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The Technology Machine

Book The Technology Machine

How Manufacturing Will Work in the Year 2020

Free Press,
 


4 January 2026

The Stuff of Thought

Recommendation

Steven Pinker’s enthusiasm about language comes through everywhere in this book – which is a good thing, because the subject matter itself is dense and complex. This combination results in a curious reading experience: Pinker’s lively style, many anecdotes and extreme lucidity pull you forward in the text, but the difficulty of the questions he raises could stump you for some time. He explores many linguistic theories in such depth that readers without a particular interest in the field may, frankly, get lost or find the book too abstract, despite Pinker’s numerous attempts to ground his discussions in reality. Therefore, while this is a fine book, BooksInShort recommends it primarily to patient readers who have a strong interest in language and philosophy. Bring along an open mind and a sense of humor, since Pinker explores language practices – such as obscenities and insults – that may provoke emotional responses.

Take-Aways

  • The relationship between language and reality is not direct.
  • No intrinsic link exists between a word and what it refers to.
  • Models of time, space and causality are built into human language. These models don’t match science’s best understanding of the physical universe.
  • Language is good for practical communication within a human context, but it is not the best vehicle for philosophical speculation.
  • Metaphor is everywhere, even in expressions that seem either abstract or literal.
  • Some theories claim that the words you know determine the thoughts you can have. In reality, words follow concepts and develop through practice.
  • Different verbs imply different relationships to time and events.
  • People generate new words all the time, but no one can predict which ones will last.
  • Most obscenities derive from religion, sex or bodily functions. People treat them as if the words and taboo concepts are directly connected.
  • People avoid direct communication about emotionally charged relationships.

Summary

Language and Reality

On September 11, 2001, terrorists flew a plane into one tower of the World Trade Center in New York City. A few minutes later, they flew another plane into the other tower. This sweeping tragedy changed the course of history – but was it one event or two? The question might seem odd, given the scope of the disaster, but for at least one person affected by the attack, it is a good example of the importance of the fit between language and reality. Larry Sunstein, who held the lease for both towers, had insurance against catastrophes. Specifically, he was insured for distinct events, so the question of whether 9/11 was one event or two is not academic to him. The answer is worth more than $3 billion. It exemplifies the kinds of semantic problems that humans constantly confront, issues arising from the vexed relationship between language and reality.

“Semantics is about the relation of words to thoughts, but it is also about the relation of words to other human concerns.”

The relationship is challenging because no intrinsic tie exists between a word and its referent. There’s no reason to call a particular animal a “cat” in English or a “chat” in French. Yet, each word has strong historical associations for its users. What’s more, the metaphors that abound in language express assumptions about the nature of reality. To understand, consider first names. Contemporary parents often seek unique names, only to discover that the ones they’ve chosen are part of a fashion cycle in names and will quickly become dated. First names accumulate meaning through their association with time periods, generations and even social movements.

Theories of Language

For centuries, philosophers, psychologists, linguists and other scholars have generated innumerable theories of how language works. Depending on their main premise, most of these theories fall into one of three categories:

  1. “Extreme nativism” – This theory says that the human brain has a built-in capacity for language and other foundational ideas –“some 50,000 innate concepts,” according to one model. Nativists argue that while you may require some experience of the world to ground your understanding, you already have the conceptual base. One problem with this view is that it doesn’t really explain the way people use language, or how concepts shift and grow and, especially, how new terms arise to explain new experiences.
  2. “Radical pragmatics” – At the other end of the theoretical spectrum from nativism, pragmaticists believe that no “permanently existing conceptual structure” accompanies specific words. Observing words’ “polysemy,” the way they can shift meaning depending on their context or even carry multiple meanings, this school concludes that nothing in language is fixed. Relationships between words and concepts result from social practice and change over time. This theory explains how people use words, but it obscures the way syntactical rules shape use patterns and changes in language.
  3. “Linguistic determinism” – Determinists believe that the language you speak determines which concepts you can consider. Certainly the way you frame a question influences how you think about it, but people regularly deal with concepts for which they have no terms and animals show signs of manipulating concepts such as cause and effect without any words at all.

How Children Learn Language

Language acquisition is a marvelous, complex act of induction. Children experience a large but finite number of speech examples. No one tells infants the rules that govern language; because they don’t speak yet, you couldn’t explain the rules to them even if you wished. Nevertheless, babies move quickly from memorizing and echoing words to analyzing the language flowing around them. They learn the principles, even though they can’t articulate them, and then they begin to generate new combinations of words and concepts. When children learn a new verb, they use it, although they often make mistakes, for example, by conjugating an irregular verb as if it were regular. However, even here their linguistic skills are amazing, as parents could never correct each misused or malformed word. Instead, children monitor their social context and reshape their language use according to the cues they absorb.

Time and Space: Are They Just in Your Head?

Some concepts are essential for going through life. You can’t really have a functioning mind without them. Time is one such concept; you can’t “imagine an event that doesn’t unfold in time or take place at a given time.” Space is another. You can imagine elephants being anywhere you like. You cannot, however, imagine them existing but being nowhere. To think, you must use these concepts. Causal relationships, which link objects as they pass through space and time, are almost as essential to human activity. Assumptions about these concepts are built into the language you use daily.

“Language itself is not a single system but a contraption with many components.”

This raises a major question: Do these concepts come from reality or from the mind, which imposes them on experience? Philosopher Immanuel Kant argued that these concepts originate in the human mind, and that people use them to force organization onto a fluid, complex reality. The truth falls somewhere in reality and the mind. Time and space are not wholly artificial, nor are they absolute. Studies in animal cognition show that they think in terms of cause and effect, and understand space and time – though not, perhaps, in the same way humans do.

“The flexibility of the human mind – its ability to flip frames, shift gestalts or reconstrue events – is a wondrous talent.”

People use language to orient themselves and others in time and space. All languages contain words that express spatial relations, such as “on” or “in.” They can express fixed relations, such as east or west, or orientations that depend on the speaker’s location, such as left or right. Verb tenses express temporal relationships. Some languages communicate “aspect,” or the speaker’s viewpoint, to describe “the shape of an event in time, such as whether an event is ongoing or requires a specific end point, such as ‘draw a circle’.” Different classes of verbs indicate different kinds of temporal relationships, and various kinds of nouns represent various judgments about physical substances in space. For example, you can have “some” applesauce, but you can’t split a person the same way.

“People assume that the world has a causal texture – that its events can be explained by the world’s very nature, rather than being just one damn thing after another.”

Human language is pragmatic, at least if you use it well. It works nicely for engineering and explaining how to do things, and for making important emotional and cultural distinctions. However, the way language communicates spatial and temporal concepts works so poorly for philosophy that it can produce paradoxes or comedy. Intuitive, linguistic models of the world are also poor fits for scientific schema, such as physics. People in ordinary conversations speak of the world as much more volitional than physicists do, for example.

Is a Rose a Rose?

Metaphors are everywhere in language, even in text that seems completely abstract. They enable speakers to understand new concepts by anchoring them in the concrete and familiar. Some thinkers claim that people understand only “concrete experiences,” and can think about abstractions only in terms of those experiences. One theorist of metaphor, George Lakoff, argues that metaphors are “an essential part of thought,” which is essentially “embodied.” However, this theory would deny the existence of philosophy and abstract thought, because it rejects the existence of absolute or universal truths that individuals can’t experience directly.

“The ancestry of words is distinctive among areas of human curiosity, because it is marked by (1) an astonishing amount of knowledge, and (2) an astonishing amount of codswallop.”

You don’t have to believe that all language is metaphor to recognize how powerfully metaphors shape understanding – or to be concerned about how often imprecise metaphors lead people astray. In fact, one of the marks of good writers is the care they take to find appropriate, accurate metaphors.

Words and Their Meanings

Where do “the meanings of words” come from – the human mind, or the world itself? Neither answer quite works. Words refer to particular aspects of reality, so they acquire meaning by essentially pointing both speaker and listener to a shared referent. But, word meanings shift over time, over space and in practice. These shifts occur due to a range of factors, including:

  • Social pressure – A homophone (sound alike term) or near-homophone for an obscenity tends to change in some way.
  • The disappearance of the referent – Species may become extinct; events may end.
  • The transformation of the referent – A harmless virus may mutate, becoming deadly, so it may acquire new associations as a referent.
“Mistaken identity is a plot device so revealing of human foibles that Shakespeare used it in no fewer than eight of his comedies.”

A kind of folk linguistics argues that language and reality – a word and that which it names – are directly linked. Even though formal linguistics rejects this idea, it remains emotionally compelling and is the basis of such practices as magic. Linguistic associations do occur between sounds and meanings, but only sometimes and only in some languages. You can see this at its strongest in onomatopoeia and at its weakest in word clusters such as the English words that start with “sn” and relate to the nose, which wrinkles when you say them, such as “snorkel,” “snout” and “snot.”

“With the use of metaphor and combination, we can entertain new ideas and new ways of managing our affairs.”

Individuals coin words, which groups then adopt – or don’t. Words that are too consciously clever often fall into disuse, while serviceable words that align with cultural trends tend to stay in the language. People may invent new words from scratch, but more often they create them using these standard mechanisms:

  • Adding prefixes or suffixes.
  • Combining two words or parts of words to make a new one.
  • Adopting words from other languages.
  • Pronouncing abbreviations as though they are words.

)*(&^%^%*#^%#!!!

Despite the nearly universal recognition of the importance of free speech, many countries limit it. Some of these limits, such as those on “fighting words,” prohibit socially disruptive actions – yelling “Fire!” in a crowded theater, for example – and make pragmatic sense. Often, though, societies limit verbal expression for murkier reasons, for example, obscenity. Most obscenities refer to the horrific, such as hell; the disgusting, such as terms for bodily waste; or the emotionally charged and socially taboo, such as terms for sexual practices. Recently, racial epithets have become almost as problematic as obscenities. These kinds of words carry irrational power; many people treat them as innately corrupting, as though speaking of a taboo act were the equivalent of performing it.

“Say a woman has just declined a man’s invitation to see his etchings. She knows...that she has turned down an invitation for sex. And he knows that she has turned down the invitation. But does he know that she knows that he knows? And does she know that he knows that she knows?”

Psychologists explain the power of obscenities as cathartic and say that using forbidden terms releases tension. Sociologist Erving Goffman suggests that cursing is also a social signal. If you swear after spilling spaghetti sauce on your shirt, you show others that you didn’t intend to do so. You communicate to your audience that your apparently irrational act has meaning. Swearing follows cultural conventions, in that different kinds of terms are taboo in different cultures or even within the same culture at different times or in different contexts. Cursing also is linked to the “rage circuit” in the mammalian brain, making a curse akin to the yelp of an angry dog.

You Don’t Say

In addition to obscenities, which social conventions may completely forbid, people often don’t directly say other things because they are too risky. These taboos range from communications that may be legally actionable, such as offering a police officer a bribe, to those that carry emotional risk, such as making sexual overtures. In such cases, people use indirect expressions that phrase orders as requests or use a kind of code. If the purpose of speech is communication, isn’t this behavior self-defeating? Both parties understand the message, so why not say it directly? In fact, language is not only about communication. It also involves negotiating and renegotiating relationships. People use polite expressions and circumlocutions in relationships that have power imbalances. “Communal sharing” also works against explicit communication since many routes to intimacy and trust depend on unspoken conventions. Under such circumstances, speaking openly can threaten relationships.

About the Author

Steven Pinker teaches psychology at Harvard, and is the author of The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works and The Blank Slate, a Pulitzer Prize finalist.

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The Stuff of Thought

Book The Stuff of Thought

Language as a Window into Human Nature

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