EPISTEMOLOGY II

ORAL PRESENTATION BY: ADRIANA ESPERANZA NIO SANCHEZ CODE: 1010821017 TEACHER: MARY ELLEN NIO GROUP: 42

HOW LANGUAGE TRANSFORMED HUMANITY

BY MARK PAGEL
BIOLOGIST MARK PAGEL SHARES AN INTRIGUING THEORY ABOUT WHY HUMANS EVOLVED OUR COMPLEX SYSTEM OF LANGUAGE. HE SUGGESTS THAT LANGUAGE IS A PIECE OF "SOCIAL TECHNOLOGY" THAT ALLOWED EARLY HUMAN TRIBES TO ACCESS A POWERFUL NEW TOOL: COOPERATION.

WHY WE SHOULD LISTEN TO HIM:

Mark Pagel builds statistical models to examine the evolutionary processes imprinted in human behavior, from genomics to the emergence of complex systems -- to culture. He says: "just as we have highly conserved genes, we have highly conserved words. language shows a truly remarkable fidelity." What the new studies accomplish is a far more sophisticated analysis of the regularity of language change that earlier scholars noted or theorized,"

ABOUT THE LECTURER

Mark Pagel is an evolutionary theorist with interests

in mathematical and statistical modeling of

evolutionary processes. His current interests include language and cultural evolution. His co-authored 1991 monograph on comparative statistical methods in evolutionary biology is standard reading for the field and he is the author of several other statistical methods for identifying

and analyzing evolutionary trends and for inferring

phylogenetic trees.

ABOUT THE LECTURE

He define language as the most powerful, dangerous, and subversive trait that natural selection has ever

devised because it allows you to implant a thought from

your mind directly into someone else's mind, and they can attempt to do the same to you, without either of you having to perform surgery.

Instead, when you speak, you're actually using a form of telemetry

not so different from the remote

control device for your television. It's just that, whereas that device relies on pulses of infrared light, your language relies on pulses, discrete pulses, of sound.

Languages are genes talking,

getting things that they want. And just imagine the sense of wonder in a baby when it first discovers that, merely by

uttering a sound, it can get

objects to move across a room as if by magic, and maybe even into its mouth.

LANGUAGE'S SUBVERSIVE POWER

Has been recognized throughout the ages
in censorship. The tower of Babel story in the bible is a

fable and warning about the power of

language. And this leads to the wonderful irony that

our languages exist to prevent us from

communicating.

We though chimpanzees were intelligent. but if they really were intelligent, why would they use a stick to extract termites from the ground rather than a shovel? Because it is what we do. Now the reason, because Chimpanzees don't do that is that they lack what psychologists and anthropologists call social learning.

They seem to lack the ability to learn from others by copying or imitating or simply watching. As a result, they can't improve on

others' ideas or learn from others'

mistakes -- benefit from others' wisdom. And so they just do the

same thing over and over and

over again.

WHY DO WE HAVE A LANGUAGE?

Language really is the voice of our genes. Now having evolved language

though, we did something peculiar, even bizarre. as we spread out

around the world, we developed thousands of different languages. Currently, there are about seven or 8,000 different languages spoken on Earth. We use our language, not just to cooperate, but to draw rings around our cooperative groups and to establish identities, and perhaps to protect our knowledge and wisdom and skills from eavesdropping from outside.

OTHER LECTURERS RELATED

Steven Pinker: Linguist, questions the very nature of our thoughts -- the way we use words, how we learn, and how we relate to others. In his bestselling books, he has brought sophisticated language analysis to bear on topics of wide general interest. Steven asserts that not only are human minds predisposed to certain kinds of learning, such as language, but that from birth our minds -- the patterns in which our brain cells fire -- predispose us each to think and behave differently.

PATRICIA RYAN: LANGUAGE TEACHER

English is big business and languages are dying as never before. Is there a connection? Is this another manifestation of McDonaldisation the undesirable face of globalization? Do we want to lose the variety

of languages and all the rich culture that

comes with them?"