Roy Harris est Professeur Émérite de Linguistique Générale à l'Université d'Oxford et Fellow Honoraire de St Edmund Hall. Sa vaste expérience académique, y compris des postes d'enseignement à Hong Kong, Boston et Paris, ainsi que des bourses de recherche en Afrique du Sud, en Australie et en Inde, a façonné ses profondes perspectives sur la nature du langage. Le travail de Harris explore la relation complexe entre le langage, la pensée et la société, examinant comment les structures linguistiques et leur usage reflètent et influencent la cognition humaine et les interactions sociales. Ses contributions savantes offrent un examen approfondi des manières fondamentales dont le langage façonne notre compréhension du monde et des autres.
Set against the backdrop of an epic space journey, the story follows four generations aboard the Protostar, a massive ship, as they uncover their family's legacy and the sacrifices made to seek a new world. A century after their departure, the narrative delves into the origins of their mission, revealing the passion and determination that drove them to embark on this monumental quest for survival and civilization's future.
The book presents a provocative argument that reason is not an inherent trait of the human mind but rather a construct shaped by the evolution of literacy in European cultures. Harris critiques the traditional view of rational thought, tracing its development from Classical Greece to contemporary symbolic logic, suggesting that Western notions of reason are deeply intertwined with cultural and historical contexts rather than being universally innate.