A work that explains how we think about each other's thoughts about each other's thoughts, ad infinitum. It sounds impossible, but Steven Pinker shows that we do it all the time. This awareness, which we experience as something that is public or "out there," is called common knowledge, and it has a momentous impact on our social, political, and economic lives.
Well organized and clearly explained. The problems arise from Pinker’s inability to keep himself out of the narrative ... A book can be bad without its thesis being untrue. That, at least, should be common knowledge.
Foregrounds Steven Pinker’s many virtues as a populariser of science: his lucid style, his ability to marshal technical research for a general audience ... Pinker ranges far and wide, showing how common knowledge plays a role in everything from laughter and tears, to euphemism and flirtation ... The nature of the book’s central phenomenon — common knowledge — is left impressionistic, although Pinker engagingly outlines its potential applications. The essence of common knowledge itself is not yet a matter of common knowledge.
As lively an exposition of cognitive science as you are likely to find ... A lucid, measured discussion of what we need to understand about our communications with each other ... [Pinker] struggles a bit to give weight to aspects of our moral lives that aren’t always amenable to reason (he is predictably dismissive about religion, for example) ... But it enlightens and provokes; to pick up his own metaphor, it is worth dancing with.
