Babel's Dawn

Chimp Generosity

PNAS has just published a paper on Spontaneous Prosocial Chooice by Chimpanzees. It is a little off topic for this blog but the role of cooperation in the evolutiion of language is so central to this blog that I want to bring my readers' attention to anything that challengnes the thesis. Although, really it does noto challenge the position that sharing knowledge is basic to humans, rare amongst chimps.

The paper describes experiments in which the chimpanzees prefer behavior that gives themselves and a fellow chimpanzee a reward over behavior in which the actor alone receives an award. This shows a sympathy and "common decency" that has sometimes been denied. But it doesn't really address the issue of cooperation in which two or more individuals work together toward a common goal, at some risk or cost to the participants. The behavior show here carries no cost.. Still, it  is not nothing.

How Does Coevolution Work?

Orchids adapted to the needs of butterflies and vice versa. Coevolution fits things together. How did that work in the coevolution of human biology and culture.

As I reported last week, the latest issue of Human Biology is devoted to language origins, with a particular focus on "genetic and cultural" approaches. In an afterword to the issue Tecumseh Fitch addresses a theme running through the whole issue, coevolution. Fitsch sees coevolution as the way to get past relying on an overly sharp distinction between biological and cultural explanations for language origins:

Birdsongs and Speech

The March issue of Bioscience contains a brief piece by yours truly (Edmund  Blair Bolles) on the similarities between the evolutionary history of birdsongs and human speech. You can find the article by itself here.

Ape ‘Utterances” Have Been Reexamined

The current Language and Communication journal has a paper titled, "Nonhumans Primates Do Declare!" authored by a group of distinguished scholars: Heidi Lyn, Patricia M. Greenfield, Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, Kristen Gillespie-Lynch, and William D. Hopkins. It is one of those articles I always rush to read because it plainly aims at testing the basic propositions of this blog: speech is a cooperative effort to contemplate topics.

Is Every Theory in the Humanities Incomplete?

Every theory of humanity fits into a larger theory which fits into another theory which fits into another theory.And any theory of humanity that claims to be top doll is false.

One of the surprises of Tecumseh Fitch's text on The Evolution of Language is the claim that Chomsky is not hostile to the theory of evolution as a guide to language origins. Opinion is very strong that Chomsky was a big barrier to researching language origins, and in Thomas Scott-Phillips' paper, "Evolutionary Psychology and the Origins of Language," (discussed in last week's post) there is quite an interesting presentation on what Chomsky's objections were (and are) toward an evolutionary explanation of where language came from.

Riding A Two-Horse Shay

Francesco Petrarch invented the humanities.Can they be improved by adding a dash or two of Darwin?

David Sloan Wilson has an online essay, "Take the Evolution Challenge," calling for the extension of "evolutionary theory beyond the biological sciences to include all things human." It is a radical proposition, perhaps overstated as a way of encouraging people to take the idea to its limit. I'm not sure what new insights the theory of evolution has to offer a history of, say, the crusades, but you never know. And I have to say that I have been amazed by how much I have clarified my understanding of language simply by taking an evolutionary approach to its origins. It turns out that evolutionary theory forces a series of questions that, at least in the study of language, pays off handsomely. So, despite my uncertainties, I want to endorse Wilson's call. No study of anything human should ignore what evolutionary theory has to offer.

The Cost of Speech

I'm trying something different today. Instead of something to read, I'm going to make a presentation on the costs of evolving speech. It may take one or two posts to get the sound and imagery right, but here we go. Feedback is welcome.

Links: 

• Last week's post
• Antonio Vieira
• Abstract of Vieira's paper

Did Society Do It?

What do you think these ravens might be telling one another? Perhaps more than you guess. (By the way, this irresistable illustration comes from a great website: DestopRating.com.)

The big news this week is the coming Evolang conference in Utrecht, but there is also an important new review article on “Social Cognition and the Evolution of language” by Tecumseh Fitch (who will be in Utrecht celebrating his new text book), Ludwig Huber, and Thomas Bugnyar in the latest Neuron journal. The three authors have just created a Department of Cognitive Biology at the University of Vienna, and with this paper they are off to a fine start. Their primary thesis—“human language and social cognition are closely linked”—will be familiar to anyone who reads this blog, but they provide much comparative biological data for their claim.

Origin of the Species 150 Years On

The New York Academy of Sciences held a celebration honoring the 150th anniversary of the publication of one of its members books. I wrote a short account of the event for Bioscience magazine, which you can read here: Darwinian Dynamics

Adoption Among Apes

John Hawks' blog has an important report on adoption of orphans by male chimpanzees in the wild, probably as a result of very heavy leopard predation. This is very important in thinking about evolution and the rise of altruism. I'm amazed and impressed.