christensen darwinian assault on language

7/28/2019 Christensen Darwinian Assault on Language

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TheDarwinian AssaultUpon LanguageBryce J . Christensen

CHARLESARWINONFRONTSa major problemon the first page of The Descent ofMan(1871), a problem he has not solved bythe close of the book. He engages theproblem in passing again inExpression ofThe Emotions in Man andAnimals (1872)but still it remains unsolved. The prob-lem is that posed by the very words inwhich both books are written. The prob-lemisthatof language. How did languageoriginate? And what can language meanand do f explained asaproduct of Dar-winian evolution? It is an issue of rel-evance today, as contemporary Darwin-ians-many calling themselves sociobi-ologists-exert ever wider influence inintellectual life.InThe Descent ofM an,Darwin insistsat length that the same process of naturalselection responsible foreveryother fea-tureo human and animal ifeisalso quitesufficient to explain the origin of lan-guage.Heemphatically rejects the asser-tion of Max Muller that the use o lan-guage marks an impassable barrierbetween man and animals, pointing outthat since themore intelligent animalsdemonstrate considerable ability to com-municate with one another, the facultyo articulate speech in itself [does not]BRYCE. CHRISTENSENsDirector o f the EnglishLanguage Study CenteratSouthem Utah Univer-sityand a regular contributor toModernAge.

offer any insuperable objection to thebelief that man has been developed fromsome lower form. Darwin stressed thatsome animals recognize the meaningsofwords humans use. On this point, hequoted the agnostic Sir LeslieStephen:A dog framesageneral conceptof catsor sheep, and knows the correspondingwords as well asaphilosopher. And thecapacity tounderstand isas good a proofof vocal intelligence, though in an infe-rior degree, as the capacity to speak.Darwin even referred to the 1anguageofants, who demonstrate considerablepowersof intercommunication by meansof their antennae.Darwin compared the various bodysignals found among animals (e.g.,thebaring of the teeth among monkeys) tothe gesture language used amongCistercian monks who have taken a vowofsilence. Humanvocal language emergedfromaprocess, completed by innumer-able steps,halfconsciously made.2Morespecifically, Darwin held that languageowes its origin to the imitation and modi-fication o various natural sounds, thevoices of other animals, and mans owninstinctive cries, aided by signs and ges-tures. Some unusually wise ape-likeanimal likely took thefirst step in theformationof alanguage bywarning othermonkeys of the approachof apredatornot merely by using the signalcriesof


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danger common among monkeys, butby imitat[ing] the growl of a beast ofprey, thus communicating the natureof the expected danger. Darwin furtherconjectured that someearly progenitorof man probably first used his voice inproducing true musical cadences,that isin singingasdo someof the gibbon-apesat the present day.Such musical powersmight have been especially exerted dur-ing the courtship of the sexes,-[and]would have expressed various emotions,such as love, jealousy, triumph. Thisspeculation led to the conclusion thatthe mitationof musical cries by articu-late sounds may have given rise to wordsexpressive of various complex emo-tion~. ~Darwin considered the perfectlyregu-lar and wonderfully complex construc-tion of the languagesof many barbarousnations as no satisfactory proof eitherof the divine origin of these languages, orof the high art and former civilizationoftheir founders. For, on evolutionary prin-ciples, the most symmetrical and com-plex [languages] ought not to be rankedabove irregular, abbreviated, and bas-tardized languages, no more than a bi-lateral Crinoid with few, unsymmetricalpartsissuperior to a perfectly symmetri-cal Crinoid of 150,000 piece^^ (Neveruse the words higher and lower,Darwinwrote on aslip of paper which he usedasa b~okmark.)~In Darwins vision, natural selectionnot only accounted for the originof lan-guage, evolutionary competition alsodetermined changes in vocabulary andsyntax in existing tongues. New wordsare continually cropping up, he ob-served, but as there is a limit to thepowers of the memory, single words, likewhole languages, gradually become ex-tinct.... The survival or preservation ofcertain favoured words in the strugglefor existenceisnatural selection.jTocomprehend how strenuously Dar-win sought to naturalize human speech,

it is helpful to contrast his views withthose of Rene Descartes, theseventeenth-century thinker often called the fatherofmodern philosophy. Suspected by manyof covert atheism, Descartes propoundedmany materialistic and mechanistic theo-ries. Regarding the human bodyasnoth-ing else than a statue or a machine ofclay, Descartes thought it possible toexplain almost all the bodys movementsas effects proceeding simply from thearrangement of its parts, no more norless thando themovements of aclock ..sothat it is not at all necessary for theirexplanation to conceive...[a] ~0 ~1 . ~Yet even this desiccated mechanistsensedsomethingof the wonder of words.There s,he wrote, nooneof our exter-nal actions which can assure those whoexamine them that our body isanythingmore than a machine which moves ofitself, but which also has in it a mindwhich thinks-excepting words.8 Andelsewhere: the word is the sole sign ofthe presence of thought hidden andwrapped up in the body.gSome criticshave rightly accused Descartes of cut-ting the throatof poetry by making manan angel shut up in a machine.1 But atleast there was an angel in Cartesianthought, with language acknowledgedashis seraphic wings. Darwin sought tobanish the angel, or at east clip its wings.Darwins conjectures about the ori-ginsof language, derisively labeled ThePooh-Pooh Theory, have largely beenabandoned by linguists, who generallyfind them technically naive and implau-sible. Yet the evolutionary spirit ofDarwins work has nonetheless pro-foundlyinfluenced modern thought aboutlanguage. In 1937, linguist Richard A.Wilson wrote a provocative-if idiosyn-cratic-work entitledTheMiraculousBirthof language. playwright Bernard Shawwrote a preface for a second edition pub-lished in 1941.)Wilson protested that aproper understanding of language meantrecognition of the enormous difference


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between man and the animals. Wilsoncontrasted the free unlimited, cumula-tive development of human language...with the few, fixed, stationary,uncumulative, natural criesof animals.This contrasthedeciared, stood in un-equivocal contradiction to the wholetenor of Darwins arguments. Darwinhad failed in his analysis of languagebecause he perceived no differencebe-tween the central unifying mental facultyof animals and the corresponding mentalfaculty of man-the ROUS. Nonetheless,Wilson complained that Darwins viewson language had altered in avery signifi-cant way our philosophyor general con-ception of language in relation to otherphenomena in the world. They have, as amatter of fact from the dateof their pub-lication deflected the philosophy of lan-guage from the natural course which ithad been following for the previous hun-dred years.

Evidence of this deflection can befound in the workofmany linguists sinceWilson. For instance, linguist Fred Westconceded in1975that Darwins theory oflanguage origin has been theoreticallydiscredited. Yet West persists in hisreliance on evolutionary logic to accountfor the origins of language. Language,he writes, evolved from the need ofhumans to signal to each other and fromtheir developing mental capacity to ac-commodate symbolism and construct asystem of word-symbols. In particular,West reasons .that the same develop-ment which enabled men to construct alanguage also enabled him to constructtools....For our primitive toolmakers tocoordinate the intelligent behavior in-volved in the use of tools, language wasnecessary. In keeping with evolutionarydoctrine, the emergenceof language re-quires prolific and profligate Nature [to]have wasted a myriad humanoids overthousandsof years before the right com-bination caught on. Inefficient types diedout, killed off in war or bysavageanimals,

possibly because they were unable tospeak or understand basic signals.12In the same evolutionary spirit, lin-guist Raimo Antila focused on the pri-

mates asasourceof information for theoriginof language when addressing theissue in 1972. In this analysis, humanlanguage sprang from the call systemsof primates who communicate throughroars, barks, grunts.But after environ-mentalchanges [i.e.,ivingawayfrom thetree], bipedal motion became possibleso that upright posture separated theglottis from the velum, making room formore flexible manipulation of speechorgans. Such developments, Antila as-serted, would permit protohominids toresort to composite calls [ e. ,blends ofthe already existing calls.] Over time,these composite calls would acquire aspecial meaning of their own and theinitial stageso syntax [wordorder] wouldbe in the making. Human language wouldthen be on ts way toward productivity.Antila acknowledged that his mechanis-tic approach...cannot explain all of evo-lution of language, yet he was clearlysatisfied with the basic evolutionaryframe~0rk.I~At least one Darwinian premise haslostsomecredibility at the handsof lin-guist Noam Chomsky, who has insistedon the utter uniqueness of human lan-guage. With great intellectual force,Chomsky has urged that grammatical useof language, even in children, reflectsinnate deep structures peculiar to hu-mans and radically unlike anything ob-served in animal behavior. Contra Dar-win, Chomsky declares thereisno sub-stanceto the view that human languageis simply a more complex instance ofsomething found elsewhere in the animalworld. Neither physics nor biology norpsychology givesusany clue as to how todeal with these matters, he de~1ares.I~Chomsky has wonawide hearing for hisviews; indeed, i t is by invoking the au-thority of Chomsky that psychiatrist


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Willard Gaylin rejects claims that dol-phins and chimpanzees can uselanguage.Human language, Gaylin avers, is aunique phenomenon, without significantanalogue in the animal world. For theability to use language manifests thespecial quality of the human mind thatalso included the related capacities oabstraction, symbolism, and humanimaginati~n.~

Not surprisingly, some linguists havevoiced fears that Chomsky and his dis-ciples have opened the door for a cre-ationist view of language, somethingChomsky himself denies.I6 Chomsky ar-gues that the uniqueness of languageought to be viewed notasa reflectionofthe willo God in the creation of man butinstead as evidence that random muta-tions have endowed humans with thespecific capacity to learn ahuman lan-guage, though modern science can giveus no dea how or why.17

Linguist Philip Lieberman stoutlyde-fends Darwinian orthodoxy against thosewhoseesomething transcendent in lan-guage. Human language, he explains, isthe resultof along processof mutationand selective adaptive pressureswhichproduced the neural mechanisms thatunderlie speech and the uniquesupralaryngeal vocal tract. Because thisgradual process is identical to that seenin the animal world, theonlyreason thathuman language appears to be so dis-jointed from animal communication sys-temsisthat the hominids who possessedintermediate anguages are all dead.I8One of the most prominent contempo-rary Darwinians and founder of the newdiscipline of sociobiology, E. 0.Wilson,grants (with a nod to Chomsky) thathuman languageis unique,that it is agreat dividinglinebetween man andallother creatures. Heeven concedes thatcomparisonsof human speechtoanimalcommunication must be partial and ten-tative, with nocongruence between zoo-logical and linguistic classifications be-

ing forced all the way, since the mentalpotential for language may-like mansbipedal stride and peculiar grotto-laryngeal anatomy-finally provesodis-tinctively human that true homologuescannot be found among animaIs.IgFor all this, Wilson cannot restrainhimself. He must bear witness for theevolutionary origin of true language.Human language, he theorizes, prob-ably stemmed from richly graded vocalsignals not unlike those employed by therhesus monkey and chimpanzee. With atruly Darwinian horror of the possibilityof discerning anything miraculous, di-vine, or wondrous in language, he ex-plains matter-of-factly that human speechis associated with mans upright pos-ture and with an evolutionary shift intongue position and lengthening of thepharyngeal tract,which resulted in ver-satility in sound production.*0With Dar-win, then, Wilson refuses toseethe powerto speakasevidence of anything angelicin man.Tantalizingly, linguist Derek Bickertondoes briefly entertain the possibility, inLanguage &Species (1990), that languagedeveloped in part because some spiri-tual world lies hidden behind bruteevolutionary reality. Yet this remark-able cogitationisonly an agnostic waver-ing in an otherwise respectably Darwin-ian schema, fleshed out with the latestfindings of paleoanthropology. Bickertonsees the foundations of language... arback in the evolutionary history of ani-mate creatures. With Darwin, he be-lieves most of those foundations weshare with other species. No miracle,but merely evolutionary chance trig-gered, in our ancestors, the emergenceo the first stumbling attempts at lan-guage. These first stumbling attempts-dubbed protolanguage by Bickerton-proved effective in helping our forefa-thers to exploit the environment moreefficiently. True language, whichopened a pathof control and domina-


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tion for humans, sprang from a furtherevolutionary accident...a change in neu-ral organization.21oDarwins disciplescontinue his project of naturalizing lan-guage, refusing to acknowledge the hu-man word as a symho! ofmansdivineorigins-or even mans unique status.Despite its continuing attraction forlinguists and sociobiologists, Darwinianthought about language appears open toat least two serious objections. First,evolutionary thought appears to weakenappreciation for that most refined anddiscriminating type of language, namelypoetry. Theevidenceonthis point comesfrom Darwins Autobiography. Darwinthere reports that as a young man hetook great pleasure in poetryof manykinds, suchasthe worksof Milton, Gray,Byron, Wordsworth, Coleridge, andShelley. He took intense delight inShakespeare in particular. Y et in hislater years, Darwin lost his taste for po-etry. Now for many years, he admitted,I cannot endure to read a lineof poetry:1have tried lately to read Shakespeare,and found it so intolerably dull that itnauseated me. In the linguistic naturalselection that took place in his mind,poetry lost out to scientific prose. Dar-win himself traced this curious and la-mentable loss o the higher aesthetictastes to his lifework in science. He at-tributed the atrophyof that part of thebrain...on which the higher tastes de-pend to a scientific career which hadturned his mind intoakind of machinefor grinding general laws out of largecollectionsof facts.22Beyond Darwinsown life, it isworth asking whether thedeclineof poetry as a cultural force dur-ing thelast century cannot be traced atleast in part tothe acceptanceof Darwin-ian views among the educated classes.Scientists, ncludinglinguists, may dis-count as unimportant the lossof appre-ciation for poetry in Darwin or in thegeneral public. But Darwin himself re-garded the failureof his aesthetic tastes

as more than a loss of happiness. Hefeared that such failureof the aestheticsense may possibly be injurious to theintellect, and more probablyto themoralcharacter, by enfeebling the emotionalpartOf ollrn2t~Ke.*~-!arc!1s itrr?aybefermost scientists to understand or acceptthe ossof appreciation forpoetry (whichDarwin traced to his methodology), it canonly mean a troubling insensitivity tothose uses of language essential for theexpressiono someo mans highest moralideals. Henry David Thoreau may haveindulged in hyperbole when he declaredthe highest morality in the books isrhymed, or measured-is in form as wellas sub~tance-poetry.~~ut poetry pro-vides many of the most inspiring pas-sages in Scripture-including the Psalmsand much of J ob, Isaiah, and Jeremiah. I tis hard to imagine that a morality ex-pressed in Darwins flat style-or, evenworse, in the jargon of the sociobiolo-gists-could ever summon great exer-tions or sacrifices. Certainly, Darwinismhas deprivedE.O.Wilsonof any transcen-dent senseo morality.All higher ethicalvalues, he asserts, are constrained inaccordance with their effectson the hu-man gene pool ....Human behavior-likethe deepest capacities for emotional re-sponse which drive and guide it-is thecircuitous technique by which humangenetic material has been and will be keptintact. Morality has no other demon-strable ultimate function.25

If embracing truth and rejecting erroris in any senseamoral challenge, thenDarwins fears concerning his lossof ap-preciation for poetry deserve more thanpassing attention even among scientists.Indeed, a Darwinian explanation o lan-guage appears vulnerable to a secondfundamental objection: namely, that itrenders impossible any real search fortruth, including scientific truth. For Dar-winian evolutionists, anguage originatedas simply one more biological strategytoenhance survival and reproductive suc-


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cess. Note the emphasis on the useful-nessof language in tool-making and pro-ductivity among modern linguists whosubscribetoevolutionary doctrine. Butif languageissimplyatool for enhancingreproductive success, then questionsoftruth simply disappear. Thequestion thenbecomes not-as itwas for Darwin andhis Victorian contemporaries-whetherevolutionary theory is true, but simplywhether those who espouse or accept itenjoy reproductive success over thosewho reject it on religious or philosophicgrounds, or outof sheer ignorance.

Even to raise the question of truth inthe sense for which martyrsdieisto stepoutside of evolutionary theory, withinwhich reproductive success defines theultimate horizon. Some evolutionists maydismiss such objections to their theoryas mere semantic wordplay. But consis-tent adherence o evolutionary premisescreates a paradox or a contradiction.Consider the stunning admission o so-ciobiologist David Barash in his bookTheHare and the Tortoise (1987) that in thelight of depressed fertility among thehighly educated (with greater accesstocontraception and greater sensitivity toits importance), as far asevolution goes,lower intelligence may well have becomesuperior to higher intelligence.26Doesthis mean that since those too unedu-cated to know and embrace Darwinismhave more offspring than Darwins dis-ciples, that belief in evolutionary theoryis-in its own terms-maladaptive, anevolutionary mistake?But lack of education is hardly theonly reason for rejecting the Darwinianview of language. Among those who be-lieve in God, many recognize languageasa divine gift, even if marred by the Falland the curse of Babel. Only creaturescreated n the imageof God can speak orwrite. Even the co-discoverer of naturalselection, Alfred Wallace, protestedagainst Darwins denial of the unique andmysterious characterof such human at-

tributesasHope, Conscientiousness,Id+ality, Wit and other qualities, includingmany especially manifest inTo realize fully how faith can informappreciation for language, one need onlycompare the crabbed views of Darwinwith the marvelous convictions ofJacques Ellul, who has so movingly la-mented the degradation of language inour time. Enchanted by language as adivine gift that is multicentered andflowing, evocative and mythological,Ellul opposes any scientific method thatwould reduce language to a mere thing.Againstatheory thatsees anguage as anevolutionary adaptation to enhance sur-vival, Ellul declares that theword isthecreator, founder, and producer of truth.Only anguage, he asserts, can lead tothe realization of human hope.28But then just as his science killed histaste for poetry, evolutionary dogmaslowly triumphed over faith in Darwinsmind. In his Autobiography, Darwin re-ports that he gradually came to disbe-lieve in Christianity as a divine revela-tion. Further, his evolutionary viewsmade it quite impossible to maintain hisprevious belief that nature reflects intel-ligent design. There seems, he wrote,tobe no more design in thevariability oforganic beings and in the action of natu-ral selection, than in the course whichthe wind blows. Everything in nature isthe result of fixed laws. Finally, Darwinfell to the pathetic position of doubtingwhether humans are biologically fit evento consider the existence of God. Canthe mind of man, he asked whichhas...been developed from a mind as owas that possessed by the lowest animal,be trusted when it draws such grandconclu~ions?~~Evolutionary theory has eroded thefaith of many since Darwin. But evolu-tionists may find an unwelcome contra-diction lurking beneath this supposedtriumph, since in developed nations,demographers find above-replacement

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fertilityamongthosewho attend church,below-replacement fertility among thosewho do Once again,onemust ask:IsDarwinism an evolutionary mistake?But the more fundamental questionremains: s evvolutionarythenry rue when

it denies that man, the speaking andwriting creature, isin some fundamentalsense different from and higher than allother creatures? Should believers ac-cept Darwins witness, or that of Scrip-tures testifying that God created manalone in His image? Conventional wis-dom has it that these questions werealready answered when T. H. Huxley,Clarence Darrow, and the advocates ofDarwinismvanquished all foes in the late

1. The Descentof Man and Selection in Relation toSex(NewYork, n.d. [1871]),464-467. 2. The Expres-sionof the Emotions in Man and Animals(Chicago,1965), 60. 3. The Descent of Man and Selection inRelation to Sex, 463. 4 Ibid., 466-467. 5 See F.DanvinandA.C.Seward,eds. , MoreLet tersofChar l esDarwin: A Record of His Work in a Seriesof HithertoUnpublished Letters,Vol. I (New York, 1903), 114;quoted by Stanley L.J aki,Angels,Apes, andMen(LaSalle, I l l . , 1983), 115. 6 The Descent of Man andSelection in Relation tosex,466. 7.Selection fromThe Treatise on Man nDescartes: Selections,ed.Ralph Eaton (New York, 1927, 350, 354. 8.Letterto Marquisof Newcastle, inDescartes: Selections,356.9.Letter to Henry More, 1647,quoted byNoamChomsky,Cartesian Linguistics(New York,1966), 6.10 SeeAmerican Literature; The Makers and theMaking, ed. Cleanth Brooks, R.W.B. Lewis, andRobert Penn Warren (New York, 1973), 209. 11.London, 1941 [1937],79-83. 12. The Wayof Lan-guage: An Introduction(New York, 1975). 7, 13. 13.An Introduction to Historical and Comparative Lin-guistics(New York, 1972), 27-29. 14. Language andMind (New York, 1968), 11 , 62. 15. Adam and Eueand Pinocchio: On Being and Becomng Human(New York, 1990), 28- 32. 16. See Francine C.Patterson and Eugene Linden, The Education of

nineteenth and early twentieth centu-ries. Certainly, it isvain to seek the kindofscientistic proofs for faith collected bycreationists. But how much morevain totrust scientists who regard the verywords they speak asso many tcc!s forenhancing reproductive success! Betterto rely upon prophets and poets whoreverence language, spoken humbly butjoyfullyasa holy gift and a conduit fortruth and hope! When modern man shutshis ears to the chattering of Darwinianapes and opens them to such prophetsand poets, then may he hope again tohear words laden with faith, truth, andpoetry.

Koko (New York, 198l ), 204; see also Clifford A.Wilson and Donald W. McKeon,The Language Gap(Grand Rapids, 1984), 166.17.On Cognitive Struc-turesandTheir Development:AReplytoPiaget,inLanguage and Learning: The Debate Between JeanPiaget and Noam Chomsky,ed. Massimo Piatelli-Palmarini (Cambridge, Mass.,1980), 36. 18. On theOriginsof Language: An Introduction to the Evolu-tionof Human Speech (New York, 1975), 5, 81.19.Sociobiology: The New Synthesis(Cambridge, Mass.,1975), 177, 201-202. 20.bid.,556. 21. Chi cago, 1990,250-260.22. The Autobiographyof Charles Darwin,ed. Nora Barlow (New York, 1958 [1887]), 138. 23.Ibid., 138. 24. J ournal,ed. John C. Broderick et al.Vol. I(Princeton,1981), 141, ent r yf orJ une24, 1840.25. On Human Nature (Cambridge, Mass., 1978).167. 26. New York, 1986, 302-303. 27. ee GertrudeHimmelfarb, The Victorian Trinity: Religion, Sci-ence, Morality, nMarriage and Morals Among theVictorians(New York, 1986), 63. 28. The Hurnilia-tion of the Word, trans. Joyce M. Hanks (GrandRapids, 1985), 23, 46, 165, 176. 29. The Autobiogra-phy of Charles Darwin,8693. 30. See William D.Mosher et al.,Religion and Fertility in the UnitedStates: The Importance o Marriage Patterns andHispanic Origin,Demography23 (1986), 370- 374.

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christensen darwinian assault on language

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