The Crisis that caused Language

[drew hempel]

building on a "I wonder what crisis caused language" question by Daniel -- I'm a big fan of professor Chris Knight, author of the tome, "Blood Relations."

He's a radical, activist scholar and he has a website. Anyway he's got a grant to finish a new book "The Human Conspiracy" -- on deception as the cause of human language.

Blood relations argues that there had to have been a sex-strike, with females taking advantage of the menstrual cycle being synchronized with the lunar cycle. Humans are the only primates with the females exactly averaged to the lunar cycle.

Basically language was a means to ensure that high-iron content meat was allowed through long-distant hunting.

By the females hiding when ovulation occurs and then acting in solidarity through a "sex strike" only then could a strong social network evolve.

Language began as gossip and deception is a common Darwinian tactic of signaling that is often overlooked.

Of course magic played a part in all of this as well.

I'm not doing Chris Knight just since he backs his theory up with solid evidence from anthropology and it's pretty wild but no one in academia has dismissed it outright.

Knight continues to lead research in the evolution of language and he doesn't hold back in writing on radical topics as well. He wrote a fascinating critique of Chomsky for example.

drew hempel, M.A.

[sidecross]

McKenna’s take on language is that it was first used by gathers in the hunter gather era. He went on to say that hunters were usually quiet and stealth in their pursuit, while gathers used descriptive terms of language to describe what gatherings were safe to eat and their location.

It is also most likely that language began when our pre ancestors developed the ability to create fire about 1.4 million years ago.

[Dna]

http://www.sheldrake.org/realaudio/trialogues_98-1.mp3

[sidecross]

Originally posted by Dna:
http://www.sheldrake.org/realaudio/trialogues_98-1.mp3I too have the mp3 trialogues of Rupert Sheldrake, Terrence McKenna & Ralph Abraham; I am fortunate too to have the book The Evolutionary Mind: Trialogues at the Edge of the Unthinkable. Sadly the book is now out of print.

These audio pieces made in ’98 were only two years before McKenna’s death, and in good humor Sheldrake & Abraham shred McKenna’s thoughts on Artificial Intelligence.

[Caprinardo Delirio]

i can see chris knight's critique of chomsky has some meat on it, but overall i think he stretches the case too far, and he misinterprets both chomsky's linguistic theories on wherefrom meanings of words derive and also very much so on his dividing role of the spheres of political activism vs. that of the sciences. both in terms of chomsky's personal beliefs, his political methods and writing methods, and in terms of the actual practice and influence, i think knight is far from accurate. but i still think he has a point that could do to be heard by activists, although i think knight disregards many crucial power structures in his suggestments...

[Caprinardo Delirio]

i have that trialouge on video... it's great!

"psychologists in the last five to ten years have discovered darwin..." :D :D sheldrake is so funny!

[willoweyes]

"By the females hiding when ovulation occurs and then acting in solidarity through a "sex strike" only then could a strong social network evolve."

When one says "only then" in a statement like this, one is going out on a long shaking limb.

Many believe that it was the wolf-dog that taught us the benefits of a strong social network, including sharing meat with reproducing females.

The concept of language arising as a tool of deception is certainly intriguing but not unique. It's occurred to most of us, as we note the uses language is put to in the world around us. Still, I would guess that the information-sharing facet of language edges out lying by a slim margin.

[drew hempel]

There's brand new evidence that challenges Chomsky somewhat -- it's the Pirahas in Brazil. A "psycholinguist" Peter Gordon is studying them -- it's on http://aldaily.com

Anyway no one who knows their language can teach them to count. Conceptually the Pirahas only use "One, Two and Many." Normally a culture can learn to count quickly and considering the bare structure of the language this is totally unprecedented and challenges the "recursive grammar" of Chomsky. People have spent months and months but still not basic counting beyond "Many."

So Chomsky's proteges are going down to Brazil to see what's up.

Anyway my understanding is that the basic foundation of Chomsky's analysis is "zeugma" which means that the verb-subject-predicate (words supporting the verb) is a triadic structure basic to all language.

So in that case "One, Two and Many" still fits not only "zeugma" but also a Neo-Pythagorean analysis!

Professor Chis Knight is a NeoPythagorean in my opinion.

There was another recent challenge to Chomsky when it was discovered that primates use "recursive grammar" but Chomsky stated that the math used in the experiment was faulty.

Well if you really study math it's all faulty -- just as macro quantum chaos applied math professor Steve Strogatz!

Number theory is really wild!

I'm not a Chomskyite but I have read probably 30 of his books and I've corresponded with him.

I'm amazed that most people haven't even read his books. I recommend the following four books as his best:

1) At War with Asia

2) Year 501: The Conquest Continues

3) World Orders: Old and New

4) Political Economy of Human Rights Vol 1: The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism.

In fact it's my opinion (since after reading those books 20 years ago) that people who haven't read those books by Chomsky are brainwashed. Chomsky's writing style has been condemned as "turgid" and he's owned up to the criticism because he states that the topic he's addressing is so sensitive it requires an intense form.

Thanks for the comments!

drew hempel, M.A.

[sacha]

I couldn't find the article at that link, but respectfully I have to correct some confusions in your post.

First, it is not that unusual to find a native Amazonian language without words for numbers. Or just where the only numbers are "Enough," "Not enough," and "Too many." (Think about it, which carries more meaningful information, "I have five children," or "I have too many children?" -- "We have eight plantains" or "we have enough children"?)

A language develops the vocabulary it needs. If you don't have commerce, and don't accumulate possessions, much less inventory them, what need do you hsve for numbers? But this "people have been spending months trying to teach the Piraha numbers" -- they could have just stayed home and tried to teach high school students who keep saying, "Why do I gotta learn this? When am I ever gonna need this in real life?" After all, the Piraha don't have schools, so they don't have years of conditioning to force themselves to study things that they are not interested in and that have no relevance to their lives. (The subject matter taught in school is secondary to schools' main function, which is to condition future citizens to follow orders and spend their lives doing a job they hate.)

Wait until the Piraha get snagged by the money economy and then find themselves being cheated by traders. Then they will be ASKING people to teach them about numbers and arithmetic. There is a not-so-subtle suggestion that something is freaky about the Piraha brain, that they seem incapable of learning numbers. Peoples everywhere develop the vocabularies they need. There is no incapacity there.

That said, recursion has nothing to do with numbers. Recursion is basically dependent clauses, sentences within sentences. "I saw your brother when he was hunting," actually contains two statements. Recursion, the capacibility to form chains of dependent clauses, like "This is the dog that chased the cat that caught the rat that lived in the house that Jack built" (or however it goes) or "I know that you know that I know that you know that I know," or "He said that she said that we said that you said that he said that they said 'Yes,'" illustrate how recursion can theoretically go on forever -- recursion is sort of a "fractal" quality of language. A language could work without recursion -- "I saw your brother. He was hunting," but recursion has been considered a universal of human language and a distinguishing feature of human language as opposed to chimp language, and so the linguist who studied the Piraha made headlines because of the claim that their language had no recursion.

[ June 03, 2006, 04:38 AM: Message edited by: sacha ]

[drew hempel]

Thanks for your comments and clarifications! Everything you have written is correct and tightens the logic of what I wrote.

Chomsky is relying on converting linguistics into math and the latest linguistic research he supports is that language comes from the concept of number in the brain.

I can try to locate that book that he gave a promo for -- I had posted it on GNN a few years ago. Also I came across a new quantum computing book that has a whole section on Chomsky's linguistics. His research was classified military research and it's now paying off. Just as M.R.I.s are now being used in the courtroom (no confession necessary just the mathematical conversion of your thoughts) so now Chomsky's mathematics will convert our brains into quantum logic-interfaces!

Anyway since his linguistics converts syntax into calculus then it makes logical sense that humans should have the innate ability to count past 2 (as you have stated) but the article on http://aldaily.com is about the return of Worf's argument that concepts control linguistic ability.

The article is on the left-hand side of the website about one third down the page. It has a header in bold "Worf vs. Chomsky and Pinker."

My point was that if you really analyze the math that Chomsky relies on -- number theory has no need to go beyond "one, two and many."

So it's a strawman's argument in a very strange sense.

drew hempel, M.A.

[drew hempel]

Let me just further clarify. The macro quantum chaos math professor Ian Stewart writes about the "Cantor Set" fractal which is just a circle with two smaller circles a third each the size of the first circle and this is repeated infinitely. The result is an infinite fractal of finite length with the value of the number zero!!

O.K. but the symbol of a circle with two smaller circles each a third of the first circle is the same as the Tai Chi symbol.

This Tai Chi symbol can also be created by the sinewave oscillator -- an octave is the One as double the frequency by halving the length of the string. On an oscillator the octave is a circle but as infinite harmonics of the inverse proportions created by the Harmonic Series the sinewaves continue to create the Tai Chi symbol.

Fractals are supposed to be symmetric but in fact they are asymmetric -- just as the Tai Chi symbol is because the colors of the circles are complimentary opposites.

There is a deep paradox around this based on the time-frequency uncertainty principle and expressed mathematicall as "adaptive stochastic resonance" as professor Bart Kosko describes in his book "Fuzzy Logic." His forth-coming book "Noise" should be excellent.

Quantum Logic also relies on a violation of the Cantor Set --- in otherwords "Time is the Image of Eternity" as Plato stated because infinite time creates Chaos that violates axiomatic logic yet the image looks symmetric.

Kepler figured this out -- the essence of his science was the symbol of a circle inscribing and circumscribing an equilateral triangle.

The equilateral triangle is the symbol of Pythagorean -- it's a pyramid of 10 dots.

The dots represent the Law of Pythagoras -- the asymmetric Harmonic Series.

So One (is not a Number) but turns into Two which turns into Three as the Infinite Many.

2:3 equals 3:4 in the Harmonic Series even though this violates Cantor Set logic!!

Alain Connes states that music theory provides the formal language to understand quantum computers in his book "Triangle Thoughts" 2001.

Alain Connes is the top French mathematician, the creator of Non-commutative geometry essential to macro quantum chaos.

In his math 1 plus 1 does not equal 2!!

An excellent number theory book is the recent "Music of the Primes" a best-seller in the U.K.

drew hempel, M.A.