David R. Olson ,Making sense: What it means to understand. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022. Pp. xii +196.

Abstract

program as a whole may indeed have been (at best) premature’ (9). Yet ‘talk of optimization’ is very much still at the heart of minimalist thinking. ROLE provides no reason why minimalist discussions of optimized computational machinery are incompatible with biology. Conversely, nor are we told why Boeckx’s gradualist account of the evolution of syntax can have no place for such concerns of computational efficiency. We are also given no concrete rebuttal of earlier ideas espoused by Boeckx. There is a clear discontinuity between Boeckx’s earlier writings and his current position in ROLE, but little clarity with respect to which pieces we are supposed to pick up, and which pieces we are supposed to leave behind.