Best-selling author
Tom Wolfe (author of The Right Stuff) has written a very good
new book called The Kingdom of Speech. The book discusses a
great explanatory failure: the failure of theorists to present a
plausible explanation of how language originated. Because of Wolfe's
superb writing style, the book is much more readable than the typical
dry discussions of this topic. Wolfe starts out by mentioning a
scientific paper entitled “The Mystery of Language Evolution,”
written by leading linguist Noam Chomsky and seven other experts. The
paper concludes that after long decades of work trying to illuminate
the origin of language, “the most fundamental questions about the
origins and evolution of our linguistic capacity remain as
mysterious as ever.”
Explaining the
origin of language involves the same type of severe difficulties
involved in explaining the origin of vision and the origin of flying.
In all three of these cases there is the difficulty in explaining
the origin of functionality which requires a high degree of
complexity and coordination before any survival value reward can be
produced. In the case of vision, before any survival value reward can
be produced, there needs to be a highly complex setup consisting of a
preliminary eye, an optic nerve, and very substantial brain changes
needed to meaningfully process visual input. In the case of flying,
before any survival value reward can be produced, there needs to be a
highly complex setup consisting of wings (or a wing-like appendage),
and very substantial brain changes needed for either flying or
gliding to occur. In the case of language, before any survival value
reward can be produced there needs to be a highly complex setup
consisting of changes in the vicinity of the mouth, changes in the
brain needed to articulate speech, and changes in the brain needed to
process speech spoken by others.
We cannot explain
the reaching of any of these thresholds by evoking Darwin's idea of
natural selection or survival of the fittest, because there would be
no survival benefit until these functional thresholds were achieved.
For example, natural selection would presumably not have rewarded
some preliminary version of the larynx and pharynx which would have
allowed people to only speak as crudely as if they had their mouths
filled with rocks.
In the case of the
origin of language, there are no less than 4 different things that
need to be explained:
- How could changes in the vicinity of the mouth have occurred, in order to enable human speech, presumably before such changes were rewarded by offering an increased survival value?
- How could changes in the brain have occurred, in order to enable meaningful articulation of speech, presumably before such changes were rewarded by offering an increased survival value?
- How could changes in the brain have occurred, in order to enable meaningful interpretation of speech spoken by others, presumably before such changes were rewarded by offering an increased survival value?
- How could any language have come into existence, when it seems that the only way to establish a language (including verbs, grammar, adjectives and adverbs) would be if some language already existed?
The fourth question
may seem unfair, but it will not after we try a little thought
experiment. Let us imagine that some extraterrestrial visitors were
to somehow transport 10,000 humans to some “zoo planet” for the
purpose of keeping the humans as pets or zoo creatures. Let us also
imagine that there is a strange side effect of this transport process
– it accidentally wipes out the language memory of the humans
transported to the “zoo planet.” Now 10,000 humans find
themselves on this planet without any language. Could they then
create a new language for themselves?
It seems all but
impossible that they could. One might at first think that someone
could start setting up such a language by issuing a command like this:
Damn, we lost our
language! We have to fix this. Let's do this. We'll appoint Joe as
the “language guru.” He will figure out some type of language for
us to use, including the rules. We'll set up classes, and everyone
will have to follow Joe's teachings. So if Joe picks up a rock and
says, “vorko,” that means “vorko” is the new word for “rock.”
And if Joe points to the sun and says, “zonzin,” then “zonzin”
is the new word for “sun.”
But, of course,
issuing such a command would be impossible – because these 10,000
would have all lost their language, and at first would know not one
single word to speak. It seems that there would be no way to set up a
new language, if some language did not already exist. We cannot
imagine that some government would help to enable or enforce the new
language – because you can't have a government unless there is
language in the first place. Show me a people with no language, and
I'll show you anarchy.
It would seem to
stretch credulity to imagine even a fragmentary type of language
developing under such circumstances. To explain why 10,000 people
without language might come to use the same word for “rock,” we
can imagine that there might be some forceful person determined to
get everyone to use some particular word for “rock.” He might go
from person to person, saying his word for “rock,” and making an
“I will punch you” fist if the people he met didn't use the word
he used for “rock.” But people would forget the word a while
after he left. So it's hard to imagine everyone starting to use the
same word for “rock.” And it's basically impossible to imagine
how countless words such as “gently,” “mind,” “future,”
“spirit,” “yesterday,” “skill,” “think” or thousands
of other verbs, adjectives, and adverbs would ever get started, or
how rules of grammar would ever get started, such as how to speak in
the future tense and the past tense. You might be able to teach
someone a few nouns by holding something or pointing to it, but that
doesn't work for verbs, adverbs, and adjectives, and it doesn't even
work for a large fraction of all nouns (such as “leadership”)
referring to immaterial things.
This thought
experiment is relevant because if we are to imagine language getting
started many thousands of years ago, the same “how could a language
ever become established” dilemma would exist as would exist for
these 10,000 people. Even if we imagine a human with all the right
brain modifications and all the right larynx and pharynx modifications, it seems
impossible to explain how a full-fledged language ever got started.
The wikipedia.com
article on the origin of language starts out by saying “there is no
consensus on the ultimate origin or age of human language.” It
does mention a few theories, some of them just goofy speculations,
such as the idea that language developed as a form of “grooming,”
or that language developed so that mothers could keep quiet their
babies placed on the ground. Such theories merely suggest a “why”
for the origin of language, but fail to address the “how” problem
discussed above. Another laughable language theory was Darwin's idea
that humans developed language by imitating bird song, an idea so
weak that almost no one seems to advance it today.
A full-fledged and
convincing natural theory of the origin of language would require a
hypothetical account so detailed that it would pretty much have to
read like a novel. It would tell a detailed story of one way in which
a real language could have developed.
It's easy to imagine the first chapter in such a novel. Maybe you might have a bunch of savages gathered around a water hole, and one of the savages might suggest a word for “water,” with the others repeating the word that was suggested. But it would seem to be impossible to write the remaining chapters in this novel, in such a way that might plausibly explain the origin of a language, so that the last chapter would end up with people speaking in grammatical sentences such as “I think that may be a woolly mammoth I see on the far horizon, so let's go get our spears so we can hunt it.” And even the first chapter just imagined wouldn't be plausible – for how could humans get larynx's just right for speaking, brain areas right for creating words, and brain areas for interpreting speech, all before language had ever been used? So the first chapter might have to start with a human with a preliminary larynx (who talked like someone with his mouth filled with rocks) trying to get language started, stumbling about with a brain that wasn't right for creating language, trying to teach a word to some other savages whose brains were not right for interpreting language. How a first chapter like that could lead to the last chapter seems impossible to imagine.
It's easy to imagine the first chapter in such a novel. Maybe you might have a bunch of savages gathered around a water hole, and one of the savages might suggest a word for “water,” with the others repeating the word that was suggested. But it would seem to be impossible to write the remaining chapters in this novel, in such a way that might plausibly explain the origin of a language, so that the last chapter would end up with people speaking in grammatical sentences such as “I think that may be a woolly mammoth I see on the far horizon, so let's go get our spears so we can hunt it.” And even the first chapter just imagined wouldn't be plausible – for how could humans get larynx's just right for speaking, brain areas right for creating words, and brain areas for interpreting speech, all before language had ever been used? So the first chapter might have to start with a human with a preliminary larynx (who talked like someone with his mouth filled with rocks) trying to get language started, stumbling about with a brain that wasn't right for creating language, trying to teach a word to some other savages whose brains were not right for interpreting language. How a first chapter like that could lead to the last chapter seems impossible to imagine.
The failure of
theorists to explain the origin of human language is one of only many
ways in which explanatory naturalism fails to explain the human mind
and human behavior. As discussed here, there are many facets of the
human mind that cannot be explained through the mere idea of natural
selection – mainly because they are facets of the human mind that
did not give humans an increased survival value. Some of these facets
were discussed by Alfred Russel Wallace, the co-founder of the theory
of natural selection. Speaking of the law of natural selection,
Wallace said the following: “Those faculties which enable us to
transcend time and space, and to realize the wonderful conceptions of
mathematics and philosophy, or which give us an intense yearning for
abstract truth...are evidently essential to the perfect development
of man as a spiritual being, but are utterly inconceivable as having
been produced through the action of a law which looks only, and can
look only, to the immediate material welfare of the individual or the
race.”
Despite their
pretentious claims of explanatory skill, our dogmatic professors
cannot plausibly explain the origins of human mental abilities, human
speech, or refined human feelings. Human origins are still
profoundly mysterious. Given all these gigantic question marks and
the failures of prevailing thinking, the door should be open to
discussion of a very wide spectrum of theoretical ideas (including
extraterrestrial intervention), rather than just the small range of
possibilities we see in academic circles, where thinkers seem to be
handcuffed by conformist taboos. The abysmal failure of modern
academics to explain the origin of language may be a strong hint that
they are on the wrong explanatory track, are making the wrong
assumptions, and are prisoners of “inside the box” thinking.
No comments:
Post a Comment