Thought Styles: Critical Essays on Good Taste Book

We are used to being tyrannized by cooking styles and dress fashions but the idea of thought styles in control is less familiar and perhaps more disturbing.Since Ludwick Fleck developed the idea of a shared thought style holding together a scientific community in the 1930s thought style has earned a place in the philosophy of science and the history of ideas. But how do thought styles? In these essays Mary Douglas has brought the topic down to the commonplace judgements of everyday life. When we choose a doctor, or a wallpaper design, or china and cutlery for the table, and especially when we eat and when decide not to eat meat, the choice is part of a pattern of other choices that we are making with friends.People arguing together about garish or soft colours, or rough and smooth textures, or rude and polite language, are building a community that draws fine lines to fit its fine distinctions. The stronger the thought style may be, the more effectively is community present. The members who seem to submit to its control are going to use the gamut between vulgarity and good taste to convey more meaning than words ever alone can say. At the same time, personal identity can be more clearly inscribed.This book stands at the border of aesthetics and anthropology. Readers will find themselves thinking afresh about the mechanics of communication.Read More