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Frank R. Wilson’s Followers (3)
Frank R. Wilson
More books by Frank R. Wilson…
“Buttressing this argument (that you can prevent children from learning to read or ride bicycles but you can’t stop them from learning to talk), Chomsky had pointed to two other universals in human language: that its emergence in children follows a very precise timetable of development, no matter where they live or which particular language is the first they learn; and that language itself has an innate structure. Chomsky has recently reminded audiences that the origins of the structure of language—how semantics and syntax interact—remain as “arcane” as do its behavioral and neurologic roots. Chomsky himself finds nothing in classical Darwinism to account for human language.* And for that reason, says Plotkin, linguistics is left with a major theoretical dilemma. If human language is a heritable trait but one that represents a complete discontinuity from animal communicative behavior, where did it come from?”
― The Hand: How Its Use Shapes the Brain, Language, and Human Culture
― The Hand: How Its Use Shapes the Brain, Language, and Human Culture
“It is probably not a joke that computer games, spectator sports, television violence fantasies, and weekend hunting and fishing expeditions are the necessary transformations of outmoded but undiminished vestigial drives and skills that humans still carry with them. But is the creation of a menu of imaginative diversions our only recourse to the unremitting sway of an obsolete “hunter-gatherer” heritage?”
― The Hand: How Its Use Shapes the Brain, Language, and Human Culture
― The Hand: How Its Use Shapes the Brain, Language, and Human Culture
“Heuristic ordinarily has the meaning of “that which leads to discovery and invention.” … The primary heuristic has two features that are worth noting. One is that it takes the logical form of induction, generalizing into the future what worked in the past. That is, the successful variants are fed back into the gene pool, where they will be available for sampling by future generations. This is the conservative, pragmatic part of the heuristic. The other is the generation of novel variants by chance processes. This is the radical, inventive component of the heuristic. It is nature’s way of injecting new components into the system in order, possibly, to make up for the deficiencies that may occur if what worked in the past no longer does so because the world has changed.”
― The Hand: How Its Use Shapes the Brain, Language, and Human Culture
― The Hand: How Its Use Shapes the Brain, Language, and Human Culture
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