The Great Unreasoning

Wherever we go, and whatever we do, we find ourselves surrounded by a variety of human and animal noises:

"Woof!"—"Meow!"—"Moo!"—"Baah!"—"Tweet!"—"How about them Red Sox!"

And, naturally, we find ourselves wondering, What are they all saying? What does it all mean? Does it mean anything at all, or is it just a lot of meaningless background noise?

To be sure, sometimes it is just noise. But it seems that while animals use just one or two utterances (bark, growl, whimper) to convey an entir...