Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #210422 in Books
• Published on: 2000-09-07
• Binding: Paperback
• 480 pages

Synopsis
How we know that a cat is a cat is a nice philosophical poser, and has been since the time of Plato. Why we should all agree on calling the animal a cat is equally interesting, yet it throws up the problem that lies at the heart of all modern philosophy: how much do our perceptions of things depend on our cognitive ability, and how much on our linguistic resources? Where, and how, do these two questions meet? Having decided against a systematic treatment of his subject, Umberto Eco undertakes a series of idiosyncratic and typically brilliant explorations, starting from the perceived data of common sense, from which flow an abundance of 'stories' or fables, often with animals as protagonists, to expound a clear critique of Kant, Heidegger and Peirce. And, as a beast designed specifically to throw spanners in the works of cognitive theory, the duckbilled platypus naturally takes centre stage.

Customer Reviews

Difficult but fascinating
I'm neither a linguist nor a semiotician, but I found this book fascinating even though large portions of it are inaccessible to the average punter. Eco is trying to put his finger on just how we go about giving names to things, and distinguishing on thing from another. Such questions can seem excessively abstract to non-philosophers but Eco uses examples brilliantly to show how these questions are relevant in the real world. In particular, he uses the curious history of the categorising of the duck-billed platypus as a symbol of the difficulty of labelling something that appears to exist in a space between all known categories. These examples allow digressions on subjects such as Marco Polo's encounter with a rhinoceros (or was it a unicorn?), which are entertaining in their own right, while being linked perfectly to to the subject at hand. Large portions of the book are jargon-packed discussions of semiotic theory, but it's worth skimming them, because there is plenty to engage your interest along the way, and the conclusion is very satisfying, even if the questions haven't been answered absolutely. I give the book 4 rather than 5 stars because I was annoyed at the way quotations in Latin, German, French, etc. are left untranslated, sometimes at crucial points in the argument. This is neither big nor clever; indeed, it simply repels the interested layman.