Evolution of Language (General)

by dhw, Sunday, October 27, 2019, 09:06 (1852 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: But it is humans using their new brain that evolved language, not evolution itself.

dhw: Evolution is a description of the process. It doesn’t have a mind of its own! As a believer in common descent, I would argue that all evolution is the result of new uses of existing organs, as in pre-whales’ new use of their legs to evolve flippers. I propose that the newly complexified brain (it was not a new brain) evolved because of new demands, and so did language.

DAVID: For H. sapiens it was a large just in size of 200 cc as well as all the new complexity.

dhw: I have suggested that there must have been a stage at which the capacity of the existing brain was not great enough to fulfil all the demands being made on it. Additional cells were required – hence expansion. And just to anticipate your usual comment, as endless expansion would not have been possible, the cells improved their efficiency to such a degree that there has even been a small contraction in modern man.

DAVID: What demands do you think were present? They were in pure survival mode, and earlier forms could only use the brain they were given to solve those immediate problems. You are forgetting that a larger brain needs a larger skull by 200 cc. Design required for expansion.

We have covered this before, but there's no harm in repeating the argument. Earlier you mentioned tools as possible examples of the authors’ “indirect proxy evidence furnished principally by archaeology”. Then imagine a smaller-brained pre-sapiens out hunting. In order to kill his prey with a sharpened piece of stone, he has to get close up, and this is dangerous, so he suddenly has an idea (formulated in his own “language”, of course): “Maybe me can throw sharp thing from distance.” And so he invents the spear – but as we know from our modern studies, any new task requires adjustments within the brain, and in this case there are unprecedented concepts to be put into practice: attaching the sharpened stone to a shaft, getting the weapon properly balanced, learning to throw with accuracy etc. The implementation of the concept is what expands the brain – and this same process continues for thousands of years until the brain can expand no more (H. sapiens), and then complexification takes over. In brief, the brain does not expand until new concepts demand expansion. And of course the skull must expand once the brain demands more space. This is how cell communities work together – whether your God preprogrammed them to do so, or (theistic version) gave them the autonomous ability to do so (remember what you said: “from the outside of cells one cannot tell primary decision making from automatic programmed responses”). Is this not a more logical progression than the brain expanding for no particular reason (chance mutations) or your God adding a bunch of extra cells to enable my guy to receive His (God’s) brilliant idea?