In "The Literary Mind" (OUP, 1996), Mark Turner offered a bold new theory about the role of story and projection in thought and in the origins of language. In this new book, Turner outlines the consequences of that theory for social scientific inquiries into human meaning. Turner here offers a picture of how humanistic and cognitive scientific study of meaning could combine with social scientific study of meaning to create a new field, "cognitive social science". Each chapter of the book applies the theory elaborated in "The Literary Mind" to a different area or theme in social scientific research. Then, in his Conclusion, Turner charts the agenda for cognitive social science.
What will be the future of social science? Where exactly do we stand, and where do we go from here? What kinds of problems should we be addressing, with what kinds of approaches and arguments? In this volume, Mark Turner offers an answer to these pressing questions.
