Here’s a formula for seeming wise: take two complex, deep topics that are individually the domain of specialists, and that may be unfathomable to the general public. Combine them in some arcane way; you can trust that the set of experts who understand both topics will be minuscule, so you’ll be able to get away with a lot of nonsense, because experts in A will be impressed with your knowledge of B while thinking you don’t know squat about A, while experts in B will be vice versa. The classic example of this strategem is Velikovsky, who blended expertise in Middle Eastern mythology with astrophysics. Astrophysicists thought his flying, colliding planets that ignored conservation of energy were ludicrous nonsense, while gosh, there sure are a lot of provocative ancient texts talking about astrophysics, while classical scholars were shocked at all the liberties he was taking with history, but gee whiz, that physics stuff is impressively daunting. Meanwhile, the people who nothing about either were applauding him as a genius.
We have another example, and unfortunately, it’s the brilliant writer Tom Wolfe. He has taken his dilettante’s understanding of two subjects to attempt to fuse them: in this case, linguistics and evolution. One would think those two would complement each other nicely, but not when the author’s preconceptions are simply stuck in human exceptionalism, and his arguments are all about ‘proving’ his assumptions correct, no matter how false they are. And, most unfortunately, it leads him to conclude not that his understanding of linguistics is deficient, but that evolution must be false.
There’s absolutely nothing like it [speech], and I think it’s time for people who are interested in evolution to say that the theory of evolution applies only, only to animals.
He’s also not worried that creationists will love this, because, he says, there’s there’s not a shred of whatever that depends at all on faith, on belief in an extraterrestrial power
. Ah. So intelligent design creationism it is, then.
You might want to take a look at this wonderfully entertaining review of the book. It’s an ahistorical mess — Wolfe claims that Darwin was obsessed with proving that human speech was derived from animal sounds, for instance, and that the whole idea of examining the evolution of speech was discarded after Darwin, until Chomsky. He not only gets the history of evolution wrong, he mangles the history of linguistics.
Speech, Mr. Wolfe says triumphantly, gave our species “the power to conquer the entire planet,” “the power to ask questions about his own life,” the power to control other human minds—“a power the Theory of Evolution cannot even begin to account for . . . or abide.” “Speech! To say that animals evolved into man is like saying that Carrara marble evolved into Michelangelo’s David.”
And here my pen dropped onto the bonded-vinyl flooring. I stared at the page with a slack, dopey expression. I scratched my fuzzy head. I just did not understand. Even if speech were entirely due to culture, why is this some sort of victory over evolution? Why the boosterish chest-thumping? No biologists think that the great creations of our species— Mozart’s symphonies, Katsura Villa, the Mahabharata, integral calculus—were due to natural selection. None believe that today’s languages evolved from some unknown ape tongue. Meanwhile, everyone who accepts evolution at all—including, I had thought, Mr. Wolfe—knows that the larynx evolved over time, as did the pharyngeal cavity, motor cortex and the rest of the mechanism of speech. Geneticists have turned up a library of genes involved in language. Zoologists have found that animal sounds are more complex than previously believed (most are “non-Markovian,” in the jargon). To all of these people, the arrival of language is not a matter of abrupt on-and-off, like a light switch, but more a subtle accumulation, like a dimmer switch. Co-evolution, as Darwin hand-waved at the beginning. But even if there were an exact line to draw, as Mr. Wolfe contends, why would shifting it here or there reflect better on our species? Why does it matter whether Mr. Wolfe used a product of nurture or nature for his razzle-dazzle prose? Either way, it’s all his.
It’s all very sad. Wolfe will use his considerable talents at writing to successfully peddle nonsense to the public, doing harm to public education, giving me yet another line of babble to refute which will be smugly thrown at me for the next several years, and the only gain will be that Mr Wolfe will be able to buy a few more white suits while his bullshit rises on the NY Times bestseller lists.
Man, maybe I ought to do some retirement planning. What two subjects do I know very little about (that part’s easy, most of the subjects), but can profitably merge to sound innovative and insightful? Everyone goes for the obvious one, quantum physics, so I think that’s played out. Hmm. Photonics and immunology? Gravity and time travel? Indian cooking and renewable energy? I’m sure all I have to do is find the right catchy combo, and then I’ll be on all the talk shows.
For those not accustomed to the diet, Indian cooking likely would lead to the production of a renewable energy in the form of natural gas.
/fart joke
Um…we are animals.
Garment industry and avionics.
(think superhero costumes)
Astronomy and acoustics. You could call your book Uranus Hertz.
I seem to remember our “friend” Dawkins coining a word to analogize the effect of language to evolution. “Meme”
I now doubt he coined it , or even claimed to have coined it, but my first encounter of the word was in a Dawkins book, where he included a little code fragment that when run would produce fantastically complicated drawings from simple repetition of simple lines in varying rotations/location.
First impression of the synopsis in the OP sounds like extrapolating Dawkins metaphor into an actual hypothesis.
repeat 3 times: “meta.phor.”
I continue to be tempted to try and begin putting together a popular science book on Interesting Linguistics Stuff…then I remember what a huge amount of painstaking work this would be for something no-one would ever read because made-up bullshit like this sells so much better.
Animal sounds are indeed quite complex. I remember, not all that long ago, sitting outside listening to mockingbird songs, with one bird producing a hour long, non-repetitive song, which finally looped back at the hour mark.
Considering the size of the bird’s brain, all I could think of was, “Wow, that’s some seriously impressive storage in such a compact mass!”.
One thing did confuse me with the local variety though, they leave the nest awfully small, around an inch or so. Out of four hatchlings, only one survived. I’m pretty sure the heat killed at least one, as we were having a heat index of 110 when one was found dead on the sidewalk.
I guess there’s something to say with our much larger meatware, at least we can design air conditioned buildings and electricity plants to power them.
While slowly broiling our planet…
Or for that matter, how highly evolved we actually aren’t, as evidenced by Donald Trump.
@Karl #1, I dunno, Indian food never effected me in that way. But then, my diet is typically quite varied, so the change for me was minimal, save for different spices being used.
One nice thing about Qatar was, it tended to be a crossroads and most of the various cultures on the planet had expats there, making for quite a varied cuisine experience. :)
Although, *all* loved my home made marinara sauce, with no implicit recipe (if I want it sweeter, I add more onion, want more garlic, add another onion of garlic (I made batches up in gallon quantities, I still do). Freeze or can it, never run out and the canned variety makes for excellent gifts.
I’d go for Indian cooking & renewable energy. People are getting a little tired of Chopra, so his action is ripe for the taking.
A Catholic friend brought this interview up to me shortly after he’d heard it air. He was both puzzled and frustrated. Wolfe had declared he was an atheist, did not believe in God, did not believe in divine creation, did not believe in space aliens, did not believe in evolution. So … what was left? This was puzzling.
The fact that the interviewer didn’t bother to ASK that question was frustrating.
I hadn’t heard the interview, but my first guess was that Wolfe’s definition of “atheist” was possibly fluid and his definition of “God” was possibly not. He might believe in some form of supernatural vitalistic nondualistic New-Agey magic essence which I and most other atheists would consider a version of God and someone stuck on the idea that only literal monotheistic versions from the mideastern Book counted as “God” would not. But I don’t know. It would be peachy if someone susses out Wolfe’s alternative. I wouldn’t count on Wolfe to clarify.
Quantum penguin cheese vibrations.
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The Language Log quotes an excerpt from the publisher’s blurb:
Multiple ehs? As far as I know, Wallace never “denounced” evolution, albeit later he did, as I understand it, develop some odd beliefs (e.g., evolution has a purpose, and natural selection is the only(?) mechanism). I’ve no idea what the publisher / Wolfe considers a — my first reaction is whiff of “science, how does it work?”
@Tom Wolf
“for people who are interested in evolution to say that the theory of evolution applies only, only to animals.”
Everyone whose’ not an animal speak up!
“Worlds in Collision”: Isaac Asimov gave a delightful review in F&SF.
Hmmm. Chaos theory and economics. String theory and music. Mindfulness and Pokemon Go. Lots of interesting combinations…
To continue to pile on this statement, he thinks what, that plants, bacteria, and fungi didn’t and don’t evolve?
This makes no sense.
1. Only humans speak English (or any other language), so evolution of humans didn’t happen?
It’s a non sequitur.
One could say the same thing about a lot of things. Only humans drive Ford F-150 pickups so we never evolved.
2. And Tom Wolfe is wrong about language being limited to humans. All mammals have vocal cords and tongues just like humans although the details vary a bit. And ears. What does he think nonhuman animals use them for? Making communicative sounds just like…humans.
My cats talk to me every day. They know what they want to say. And I understand them.
This is all cosmically dumb. Another hero bites the dust. I couldn’t remember who Tom Wolfe even was and then it came back. The Electric Kool Aide Acid Test. The Right Stuff.
Superheroes are hot. Maybe a book explaining how quantum evolution could ACTUALLY bring superpowers.
“a power the Theory of Evolution cannot even begin to account for . . . or abide.”
Argument from ignorance. Classic.
(Reads interview) OMG! Way too much cool-aid.
wzrd1:
I was thinking something similar about your brain. That’s a lot for a person to remember accurately.
I don’t know much about the evolution of language.
Unlike Tom Wolfe, I do know how to use a computer and the internet.
The biological and neurological antecedents of human language can be traced back at least 35 million years ago.
Not sure what happened here. Tom Wolfe is 85 and I suspect, has simply gotten lazy.
I don’t know much about the evolution of language.
Unlike Tom Wolfe, I do know how to use a computer and the internet.
The biological and neurological antecedents of human language can be traced back at least 35 million years ago.
Not sure what happened here. Tom Wolfe is 85 and I suspect, has simply gotten lazy.
I’m sure was his intent. (believe me, yeah yeah harrampphh)
okay, yeah, but
to lead that to asserting language as something magical feature of humans only is “inconceivable” (u know what I mean by that use). auditory communication, human language is merely a subset. let me show a virtual venn diagram. see it? I know you do.
thank you mr wolfe for your kind assertion, so easily refuted. next!
oh, but it did! David was merely the mechanism, who was also a product of evolution, so where’s the contradiction?
I heard him on the radio the other day and I wondered when his “new idea” would show up here.
there is a good subject for a book there about the role of language in our history and how it came to be but this? At least we can see how he works his formula to take the ideas of experts in one field about a fields they know little about and combine them with each other use clever language and declare that there is no god but there is creation at least for US humans who are not animals and created ourselves with language!
Sounds like he has been talking or listening to “Newt” Gingrich too much
uncle frogy
re 22
oops tpyo, substitute in the following in the obvious location:
…
DavidMichelangelo was the mechanishm…Has Mr Wolfe said or unambiguously implied that humans are not animals? Speculating, the , whilst still wrong (e.g., he forgot about plants) may not mean quite what most(?) of the readers here — including myself — took it to mean (that humans are not a leaf on the evolutionary tree).
I wonder if what he meant was something along the lines of “to-date, the theory of evolution has not produced a satisfactory or testable hypothesis for how the ability to make & hear sounds became intelligent speech”? To take two well-known examples, the “bow-wow theory” and “universal grammar”, aren’t the full story. I am not claiming this speculative reformation is correct(-ish) — I don’t know — but do wonder if that, or something along those lines, is what Mr Wolfe is grasping at (if so, seemingly-poorly)?
I recall reading some blathering essay by Tom Wolfe mentioning “Intelligent Design” as a new game changing paradigm shifting concept around the turn of the century. However, I think the other ID (Inebriated Design) can not be ruled out.
Also, I have dibs on Dark Energy and Consciousness. I will be revisiting the Dead Salmon fmri study which actually showed that the salmon was thinking.
Is just me or does it seem that people who claim to under evolution SO WELL that they know it to be false understand it least.
To even suggest that humans are immune from evolution, but accept it goes on in the rest of the animal kingdom, is just failing to understand the theory at even a basic level.
The theory explains the diversity of life on the planet, with humans being one of those divergent points.
Vocalization is only 35 MYA? I assume it built on earlier common stuff — most land animals vocalize don’t they (along with cetaceans).
Actually a lot of Indian food would cook well in a solar cooker, and I know that anaerobic processing of the products of farm animals is actually used to produce methane for cooking purposes there.
Seriously, what is it with Wolfe as a surname? I’m sure there are some unobjectionable ones but the ones that keep bringing themselves to my attention do it because of woo declarations such as this.
The tree outside of the window had something to say, alas, I never learned tree. ;)
Thank you, thank you, I’ll be here all night.
Boy, but I can clear a room faster than a natural disaster!
#28 numerobis
I strongly suspect this is false. Most land animals seem to be insects, and not all that many of those vocalize.
#27 mond
Messrs. Dunning and Kruger, cleanup on aisle 14!
@blf #25
He’s a skilled writer. He said what he meant to say. He’s just spectacularly ignorant, and fractally wrong.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/animalia/wp/2016/08/30/confirmed-your-dog-really-does-get-you/
Sorry, can you repeat that? I couldn’t hear you over the screams of the cicadas.
From the Wikipedia acticle on cicadas
I wonder if some humans have this ability?
That’s technically not vocalization. And wiki says it’s also not stridulation which many other insects use to produce sound, like I had expected to find out just now when I looked it up. Instead of singing, it’s apparently as if they’re playing a kind of membranophone — there’s a vibrating membrane in/on/around a resonating chamber, like you’d see on a drum.
It’s not clear what any of these things might mean. That is, the mere fact that you’re producing sounds (e.g., while coughing or snoring) doesn’t imply you’re communicating, which is the sort of thing Wolfe was talking about when he’s making these wacky claims about speech. So having that kind of evidence, of sounds being produced by an animal (or a plant, fungus, inanimate object, whatever), isn’t especially helpful here. If there were no such sounds, then of course auditory communication could simply be ruled out, because there wouldn’t be anything that could have a potential meaning or use. But the fact that there is a sound doesn’t get you all that way, to knowing that something like meaningful or useful communication is happening.
However, on the flip side, there are other forms of communication, using visual or olfactory senses for instance. What about anything like that? How “old” is visual communication? I have no fucking clue. What the hell are we supposed to conclude, when huge parts of the story are being left out? I mean, a language nut like Wolfe can have his pet theory if he wants it, which privileges human speech for apparently no good reason, but it doesn’t look like any of this random ignorant speculation is going anywhere. And on top of all that, he seems to think he’s debunking evolution. What a fucking mess. Why do people publish this crap? Because his name is Tom Wolfe?
gosh, Science has demonstrated conclusively that language is much older than previously thought. particularly in how dogs understand human language. Not just intonation but the actual words too.
Andics (Attila Andics, a neuroscientist at Eotvos Lorand University in Budapest) said the findings (from scanning brains of dogs being talked to) suggest that the mental ability to process language evolved earlier than previously believed and that what sets humans apart from other species is the invention of words. — emphasis added, that we didn’t invent language, just particular words.
gee the refutation of Wolfe’s assertion was darn quick.