The Big Book of Concepts (A Bradford Book) Revised Edition

by Gregory Murphy (Author)

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ISBN-13: 978-0262632997

ISBN-10: 0262632993

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Concepts embody our knowledge of the kinds of things there are in the world. Tying our past experiences to our present interactions with the environment, they enable us to recognize and understand new objects and events. Concepts are also relevant to understanding domains such as social situations, personality types, and even artistic styles. Yet like other phenomenologically simple cognitive processes such as walking or understanding speech, concept formation and use are maddeningly complex.

Research since the 1970s and the decline of the "classical view" of concepts have greatly illuminated the psychology of concepts. But persistent theoretical disputes have sometimes obscured this progress. The Big Book of Concepts goes beyond those disputes to reveal the advances that have been made, focusing on the major empirical discoveries. By reviewing and evaluating research on diverse topics such as category learning, word meaning, conceptual development in infants and children, and the basic level of categorization, the book develops a much broader range of criteria than is usual for evaluating theories of concepts.

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Editorial Reviews

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This is going to be the classic text in the field for a very long time.

―Nature

Review

We've needed a book like this for the past decade. The Big Book of Concepts is beautifully done in so many ways and a true service to the field. Murphy's ambitious and integrated review is unusually thorough, thoughtful, and fair in its coverage of the diverse literatures on concepts. Graduate students will remember this volume the rest of their careers for what it taught them, and seasoned researchers will use it as the authoritative source to fill holes in their knowledge.

―Lawrence W. Barsalou, Department of Psychology, Emory University

Publisher ‏ : ‎ A Bradford Book; Revised edition (January 30, 2004)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 568 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0262632993
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0262632997
Reading age ‏ : ‎ 18 years and up
Grade level ‏ : ‎ 12 and up
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.85 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 8.88 x 6.84 x 1.08 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,310,146 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #827 in Cognitive Psychology (Books)
- #3,062 in Medical Cognitive Psychology

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12 ratings

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Really interesting

Reviewed in the United States on January 15, 2017

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It can get a bit dry, but the concepts are very interesting. If you've studied AI or machine learning you can see a lot of similarities between how concepts exist in our minds and how we teach computers

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MR Brain

Great review

Reviewed in the United States on January 6, 2014

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This is a wonderful review. It is a little dry at times, and often repetitive. But it really does sum the material on concept theory. The Big Book of Concepts has been a valuable asset to my library.

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A grad student

Unpleasant read but very comprehensive

Reviewed in the United States on August 31, 2021

The Good: Murphy divides his book chapters by issues in the field (e.g., typicality, induction, conceptual development), and the general structure of each chapter structure is effective: he presents and interprets studies, then discusses how prototype vs. exemplar vs. knowledge-based approaches deal with those empirical findings. After each chapter, you walk away not just with an understanding of the general landscape of the chapter’s issue, but also with an idea of how different theories traverse that landscape. And he probably covers a broader swath of issues than you’ll find in most undergraduate psychology classes on concepts. It’s admirably comprehensive.

The Bad: The main weakness of this book is its prose. It’s bland and utilitarian, sure, but more importantly I found it was sometimes confusing. Murphy’s writing is pretty jargon-free and by that fact accessible, but he speaks too often in the abstract. I’d read a string of words and initially think Okay this sounds reasonable, but then when I’d expend more effort to really try to hook up the words to some sort of conceptual picture, I’d end up with something kind of fuzzy. I suggest that you read very carefully whenever you see appeals to circularity, the words ‘it’s not clear…,’ and whenever you see Murphy’s objections on the basis of theoretical principles (as opposed to on the basis of empirical evidence, where I think Murphy does a better job).

At a minimum, read the first three chapters and don’t skip the Notes. If you run into a conceptual wall, consult the cited primary studies. The Big Book of Concepts is an unpleasant read, but you will become much more knowledgeable.

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Amazon Customer

Three Stars

Reviewed in the United States on March 30, 2016

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Sons book....

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A cognitive scientist

Wonderfully detailed and informative book

Reviewed in the United States on January 10, 2012

The Big Book of Concepts is the best book on concepts since George Lakoff's Women, Fire and Dangerous Things, published 15 years earlier. I am a professional cognitive scientist and I first read this book a number of years ago. I recently needed to look something up on infant concept formation, so I reread the chapter called "Concepts in Infancy," and was reminded just how good the book is. It is crammed with so much information that it has the potential for being as dry as dust, but, happily, it is loaded with clear examples, and is written in such a fluid style that you tend to keep reading, even after you've found the item or reference or example you were looking for. The book includes in-depth discussions of everything from theories of what constitutes a concept, to how they develop, to how they are related to words, and to the role of computational modeling in concept understanding (the succinct description of Nosofsky's Generalized Context Model, pp. 65-71, is one of the clearest, simplest descriptions of that model around). In short, for people interested in concepts and categorization, this book is a must-have for their library.

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Timothée Behra

"Concepts are a mess" : en effet

Reviewed in France on January 30, 2015

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L'auteur décrit lui même bien l'état de ce champ de la psychologie : p492 : "In short, concepts are a mess".

Une longue liste d'études moins convaincantes les unes que les autres. Un exemple de paradigme expérimental utilisé dans ce domaine est de classifier un triangle jaune et un rectangle vert avec un mot arbitraire, tandis ce qu'un carré bleu ou un triangle orange doivent être classifiés avec un autre mot arbitraire. Autrement dit, des catégories totalement non naturelles. Quel ennui.

Une autre remarque qui me vient à l'esprit, il est rapidement mentionné que Barsalou 1987 remet en cause le résultat Rosch 1975, mais c'est pire que ça : il montre que les statistiques du papier de Rosch 1975 n'ont aucun sens. Pourtant, cette article reste LA référence, et continue à être cité comme si ses conclusions étaient gravées dans le marbre.

C'est terriblement âpre, et au final, on n'en sort pas convaincu de grand chose. Terriblement ennuyant.

Et surtout, ma plus grande frustration : pas la moindre mention d'Hofstadter et de son équipe, pour leurs travaux, résumés dans "Fluid concepts and creative analogies" : http://www.amazon.fr/Fluid-Concepts-And-Creative-Analogies/dp/0465024750, sont passionnants, décrivent une vision extrêmement convaincante (et élégante, et bien définie, avec de beaux modèles à la clé) de ce qu'est un concept.

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Excellent text

Reviewed in Canada on February 25, 2013

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We used this book for a taxonomies course in my Library Science program and it's excellent for learning about concept theory and how that might be applied to designing concept structures where hierarchies must be considered (i.e. for web navigation design).

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