Editor's Note: I've forgotten who said the quote below, but I think it may have been Thomas Wolfe in his book the Kingdom of Speech, and he shows Noam Chomsky isn't revered as much as this piece may suggest, and for good reason. At any rate, this quote didn't appear in the article below. RK
"After food, the greatest human need and human desire is meaning. Even more so than the ability to reason or even to speak, this is the great divide between human and animal. We share all other needs with the higher animal species and share many needs with some of the lower animal species. Like them, we need food, shelter and companionship. But, while human beings seek and need meaning more than anything except food (and companionship—but for human beings, companionship usually provides some meaning, and sometimes enough), no animal needs or seeks meaning. As an aside, this is one of the reasons I believe in God, the Creator. There is no evolutionary explanation for the need for meaning. Meaning is not a biological need." - Unknown.
Ross Pomeroy | January 30, 2020 @ Genetic Literacy Project
Legendary linguist Noam Chomsky is both revered and controversial. His ideas have helped found and frame modern cognitive science.
One of those ideas is the notion that a single gene mutation, perhaps prompting a rewiring in the brain yielding novel neural circuitry, gave rise to human language between 70,000 and 100,000 years ago.
“This controversial hypothesis leads to the conclusion that our modern language capacity emerged instantaneously in a single hominin individual who is an ancestor of all (modern) humans,” researchers Bart de Boer, Bill Thompson, Andrea Ravignani, and Cedric Boeck summarized in a new article published to the journal Scientific Reports.
That is quite a bold claim indeed, and many scientists have serious doubts about it.
“Chomsky’s contention has little or no genetic support,” University of Colorado-Colorado Springs Psychology Professor Frederick L. Coolidge wrote. “One gene does not suddenly cause hierarchically structured language.”
The researchers behind the new paper, all distinguished linguistics experts from preeminent institutions in Europe, also professed skepticism, but decided to grant all of Chomsky’s assumptions in his original hypothesis and examine it from the standpoint of evolutionary dynamics.
What is more likely, they asked, that a single, all-important language mutation sprung up and spread to all Homo sapiens over the course of 100,000 years, or that many, smaller mutations gave rise to human language over a vastly longer timespan?
Conducting many simulations informed by known variables of evolutionary dynamics with various population sizes and generational timespans, the authors found that it’s much more probable that language evolved through a gradual accumulation of many, smaller mutations, rather than one giant mutation as Chomsky proposes..........To Read More.....
My Take - You may wish to view my Evolution file, especially, Shall Every Knee Bow?
