Culture and the Mind – Prof. Daniel Everett

A lecture by the internationally renowned linguist and anthropologist Prof. Dr. Daniel Everett in the Gehry Auditorium at the Novartis Campus will explore the complex relationship between language, culture, society and the human mind. Everett has dedicated much of his academic work to the languages and cultures of indigenous communities in the Amazon, particularly the Pirahã, with whom he lived for nearly eight years in total.

 

Everett writes about his lecture: «Culture is the unconscious dark matter of our minds. It guides each of us in ways that we are rarely aware of. Language is the most complex and important product of the intersection of society, culture and mind. Like culture, language often guides our thoughts more than we realise, even though we tend to think that we are fully in control of it. In this talk, we explore the intersection of these two powerful cognitive forces – language and culture – through examples from various Amazonian languages and cultures.

 

The great question of moral philosophy is: “How should we then live?” What role can understanding language, culture and other societies play in helping us find an answer to that question?»

 

Here you can find one of the much-discussed TED Talks (" How Language Began") by Daniel Everett.